


Like the season's trees

by dxp



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Duty, F/M, Happy Ending, Inheritance, Power Dynamics, Relationship Negotiation, Soupçon of gender, Sparring, Winterfell, song to Cersei’s issues in absentia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-02-17 23:02:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 97,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21551203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dxp/pseuds/dxp
Summary: “I saw Tarth once from a ship. It was small, had tall hills, and it was very green,” says Jaime, prompting. That is an accurate if unromantic description. Podrick watches him curiously. “The sea seemed bluer there,” he adds.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 67
Kudos: 172





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a late to the party reworking that picks up immediately after the wights are defeated. I've ported in a lot from the books, but tried to begin with everyone roughly as they appeared at that point in the show. This is pretty much my version of a fix-it for Sansa & Brienne as well. But ultimately I think it's a character study of the places Brienne and Jaime differed from their book versions in the show, and poking at the possibilities these differences open up. 
> 
> Warnings in the notes. This should be fine if you read the books/watched the show, but I've detailed specifics if you like to be prepared. Maybe especially check if the 'soupçon of gender' tag worries you? 
> 
> Title is supposed to represent ~change~ while also being a joke about their attempts to achieve a happy state of nudity. Also, Season's Trees from the album Rome is a song that I enjoy

They drag each other up the steps of the maester’s tower. Brienne feels too light without her armour. She might not have left footprints in the snow outside. Dead perhaps, after all. Except the dead are so heavy. Jaime is light. She has his wrist clutched in her hand. The sweeping currents of her exhaustion drag them onwards and not under.

Jaime presses his forehead to the door they find at the top of the icy grey steps. Brienne turns a little, to guard his back. She has to release his wrist to do it. He knocks.

“Ser Brienne of Tarth needs to send a message,” he calls.

His voice is somehow smooth. Brienne’s throat is raw. Jaime doesn’t wait for a response, he simply shoves the door open, ducks through the low frame, staggering, and then he bows her through.

“My lady,” he says, and Brienne glides past him, increasingly disconnected from the reality of his presence, stunned by the warmth of the room. 

Samwell Tarly is sat alone by the fire, wiping furiously at his face. Brienne steps backwards into Jaime.

“We don’t have ravens to use frivolously,” Tarly says, and Brienne observes the heave of his shoulders with distant sympathy. Pod had cried, silently and furiously, tears smearing the gore ground into his face, before he had fallen asleep curled up against Tyrion’s chair. Seeing it had carved out what remained of her desire to sleep. 

“My lord,” says Jaime, tiredly, and Tarly jerks around, surprised to be confronted with Jaime Lannister or unaccustomed to the title, Brienne cannot tell. He softens when he sees the two of them pressed together, taking in their stained clothes. They surely stink. Brienne can’t tell. Tarly is clean and fresh. He must have been one of the first into the hot springs.

“You were in command, out there at the front,” he says to Brienne, scrubbing at his face and neck again. It’s not a question. 

Brienne nods and grates out, through her aching throat, “Yes. But we were both there. Yes.”

Jaime had been shouting commands to the archers. A man from the Vale had taken the initiative to begin dragging injured men into one of the towers. Likely that was normal in a full scale battle. She can ask Jaime, if she still cares, on some other day. But yes, she had readied the men and commanded them. 

Tarly’s face cracks and he jerks his head towards a desk with a stack of carefully cut sheets of parchment. 

Brienne falls on them. _Father,_ she writes, and the rest comes spilling out of her. 

Indistinctly she hears Jaime lightly ask to send something of his own and Tarly’s low refusal. He comes to slump to the floor against the desk and she feels the faint weight of his gloved gold hand over the ankle of her boot. 

Brienne writes, her hand too clumsy to keep her letters elegant like her father taught her. She fills every available slither of the scroll. Afterwards, it feels even more unreal. She hasn’t allowed herself to think about home in such a long time. That this letter will find a way to the place she remembers as Tarth feels as unlikely as their having survived the battle. She blinked herself into a dream when they found Sansa alive in the crypts. 

“Will you be able to sleep now?” Jaime asks her, tilting back his head to look at her and pulling back his hand. “Could you try to sleep before the feasting?”

She looks down at his grubby face and the red exhaustion shot through his eyes. 

“Who did you want to write to?” They’d found Tyrion next to Sansa. 

He hesitates and then says, “An aunt. Although I’m not certain I know where she is.”

Brienne doesn’t even know if her father is alive. Her clothes are filthy where rotting men tore at her. Her head pounds with tiredness. How absurd, not to have written sooner. 

“Let him send something,” she says to Tarly, watching Jaime’s face fall open for her. “He fought for us. What harm could it do?”

Tarly hesitates, but he nods jerkily again when she looks at him, wet around the eyes once more. Brienne is seized by the impulse to tell him to go to the woman and child she’s seen him with, here in Winterfell. Maester’s shouldn’t continue their families. They take vows. But he’s not wearing robes, and it’s a strange world where men you commanded to their deaths climb heavily back up onto their feet and come at you with their hands. 

She looks back at Jaime, dragging himself up. They clutch at each other, swapping places, Jaime scratching deliberately at his slip of paper and Brienne sitting on the floor, awkwardly manoeuvring the length of Oathkeeper on her belt and picking at the ruby red eyes of the lion on the pommel. She doesn’t read over the letter in her lap. 

“Do you need to see this?” Jaime asks her. Brienne imagines him reading her still wet words to her father with a sick tilt of her stomach.

“No,” she says, and lets herself bask - just in this warm little space outside of the world - in the wide gratitude in his green eyes. No one has taken his sword again after the battle. She can let him write private words to some beloved aunt. They stay to watch the ink dry, silent and drifting in the heat. She doesn’t want Samwell Tarly glancing over her letter as he seals it. 

Outside they have to pick their way past so many dead men to reach the Great Keep. She thinks there is someone singing, in the godswood or Lady Catelyn's sept. Some unfamiliar northern song. Yesterday the clumsy buildings inside the walls had not felt so small against the boiled bone wash of the sky. She relies on Jaime’s guiding presence under her arm. Warm in her northern cloak, she still wishes for the brilliance of Tarth in summertime, the sky mirroring the sea, not all this dirty snow. Two black shapes dart overhead and she drags Jaime to a stumbling halt, staring up at them. She blinks away the inky silhouette of dragons and watches their ravens fly. 

When she looks at Jaime, he’s slipping away from her. Slightly absent in the way he had been immediately after the battle. Brienne had been so present them, dragging him and Podrick with her as she searched for the girls. 

She touches the gorget still locked around his neck, saying, ‘Why is this not better fitted?” She is the only one armoured properly by the Lannister coffers, though his eyelashes are gold in the muted light. She wishes he would go back to talking incessantly. This isn’t how she had remembered him. She doesn’t know how to respond to all this watching. He only smiles at her, brittle and small, when her fingers curl inside the metal. She had laced Renly in and out of his armour, but she would never have reached out and touched him like she thinks Jaime might let her touch him now. 

Very slowly, in this afterlife where they all lived and her feet don’t have to touch the dead ground, she tilts her chin down and touches the side of her face to his. His arms come up immediately inside her cloak. Tight. She cradles him in return. She hasn’t held someone like this since she left Tarth. He’s sharp in her arms. She gasps once into his hair, not a sob, dry and inelegant, and then she manages to swallow everything back down and crush it into the frozen ground. Jaime has turned his face into her and she can feel his breath, steady and warm against her freezing neck.

***

“Do you find the north hospitable?” asks Jaime in the fading light, four days after the battle. It’s the closest thing to a complaint she’s heard from him since he followed her out of the gates. It’s cautiously phrased, almost innocuous. She’s been waiting, as he drifts quietly in her wake, still wide eyed and watching, for the currents to change. She’s found herself struggling to reconcile, since he came to Winterfell, how similar he is to her sweetest imaginings, how different he is to her harshest.

“My lord,” says Pod, with quiet disapproval. Pod has shoved his gloved hands under his arms as he carefully watches Brienne demonstrate a particular stutter of her feet and the flex of the blunted sword in her hand. The air is biting, even protected as they are from the worst behind Winterfell’s squat walls. They’d been loath to remove their cloaks to practice and now they’re a tempting mass bundled in Jaime’s arms. 

He and Podrick have been out in frozen fields, collecting and clearing charred bones and the ash that hasn’t been stollen by the winds. That first day, on the other side of the darkness, it had felt as though the men she had commanded would be clearing the dead until spring, but last night they lit the last of the pyres, sending black plumes of smoke up into the clear, star spotted sky. In the freezing courtyard the ground is clear of everything but snow covered stone debris. There are plenty of living men, their breath ghosting through the air. 

Brienne had walked out to collect Pod and Jaime from the work, to act as escort but also because once Sansa had retired to her rooms she found could not bear to be alone. It was the first time, she had realised once she saw the dull bones of the naked trees in the distance, since she ordered the retreat that she had been beyond the walls. She had been expecting some greenery. There was none. Even the evergreen ivy and forest scrub has fallen away into greys and browns. 

“They treat you generously,” she says, “You feast and drink with them. Keep your voice down.”

Jaime shows her all his pretty teeth. 

“I did not mean to insult your Lady Sansa, just the dismal grey land she has had the misfortune to inherit.”

Brienne stares at him narrowly, but he does not elaborate further. It’s nothing she has not thought herself - she does not remember thinking Winterfell so grey before the battle - but she has better manners than to voice such a thing aloud. He widens his eyes at her. Brienne nods to him and swings the sword sharply through the air. She has to consciously relax her grip so as not to teach Podrick poor habits. 

She turns to engage Pod, “Here, Podrick,” she says, sliding her blade along his and twisting, shoving into his space, “feel how you lose control of the sword?” 

Podrick stumbles back, gathers himself and runs the drill back at her. Brienne shakes her head and demonstrates again. His movements are sluggish, his eyes are tired and his face is still bruised. Neither of them is sleeping well. She had thought about knighting him in the wine-soaked hours after the victory feast. It would be a shaky chain of legitimacy. Knighted by a woman-knight who was knighted by the Kingslayer. It would be better if she could have the queen do it. She wonders if he will feel he must leave once he has the honour; some of his house must still be alive out there, even if they end up on the other side of this next fight. She wants him to be as prepared and equipped as it is in her power to make him when he goes. They repeat and repeat the drill. She’ll have him safe. 

Jaime is shifting his weight in rhythm with their steps. It’s an almost invisible swaying. He’s reversed the pattern, she sees; mirrored, left shoulder tilted forwards. Pod’s movements grow increasingly confident, and Brienne lets him bask in his own cleverness for a few turns before she catches his sword early and trips him as he continues mindlessly, completing ritual steps in the dance. She catches him before he hits the frozen mud. 

“Don’t get too comfortable,” she warns and she turns away from Pod’s rueful smile to catch Jaime’s laughing eyes. He’s watched them every day since the battle, finding them in the mornings and then remaining with Pod when she leaves to find Sansa. When she returns in the evenings leaving Sansa occupied with larger politics, he’s still there. He’s waiting. He’s softer than she remembered. 

“You could train with us,” she offers, trying to stand casually, pretending to look at the blunt sword in her hand. When she is frustrated, she likes to train. It is a practice that has followed her from home. It's a good one. She would share it.

Jaime’s eyes dart immediately towards the nearest cluster of men. They’re muttering to each other as they sort through piles of recovered weaponry and armour. A not inconsiderable number of the north-men turned to watch them when they began. Brienne will concede that the attention had not been friendly, but it had been silent, and really that is a blessing not to be dismissed. 

“I think not,” he says.

“We could find somewhere quieter,” Pod says hopefully. 

Jaime should train. His sword work is so much smoother than Brienne had expected. Based on her admittedly muddled memories of the battle, he’d understood her, anticipated her. She’d had someone at her back. It had been unlike any other fight. Jaime needs to be drilling. They all need to be drilling. They’re all alive and she’d like them to stay that way. 

“Podrick could use a fresh perspective in his training.” 

Jaime quirks a skeptical eyebrow. 

Pod rushes in, “You were trained by Ser Arthur Dayne, yes? And Ser Barristan Selmy.” Jaime has been with Pod almost every waking hour since the battle. She understands that Jaime has been telling stories. 

“You are trained by Ser Brienne of Tarth,” says Jaime, narrowly.

Pod, half amused and half affronted, reassures, “Just variety. That’s always good. Not better or anything.” 

“No,” says Jaime, “not better.” 

“He really could use another eye,” says Brienne, coming closer, so that he can answer without the possibility of being overheard, “we should all do our best to help each other.”

Jaime is looking at her again, she can tell. Renly and Loras used to gaze at each other sometimes, on and on, it sometimes became a little annoying. She is quite determined not to make such a spectacle of herself without better cause than that which she currently has. She watches her own grip on the poorly balanced blade. It will be the look he wore when she named the sword. The look he wore when he knighted her. Her face is already flushed from the cold. 

“Not out here in the courtyard,” Jaime says, wary, and Brienne feels victory warm in her gut. It’s not a bad idea to be cautious. No one has taken his sword from him again, but even Brienne feels as though perhaps somebody should. The agreement had been that he would join them in the fight against the dead, nothing further had been broached. Today, the castle’s activity turned back towards preparation. The war he came to fight passed in a night. Thoughts are turning south. She can’t quite catch the quick flutter of wings in her throat. 

This morning Sansa had discovered that the castle guard have been determinedly manning each of the gates and leaving the gaping hole in the walls entirely unattended. Jaime has been outside the walls and all over the castle every day with Pod, moving the fallen to their pyres. He’s not been going to Tyrion after Brienne retires at night. He’s no one's responsibility except maybe hers. He must have known. He could have left easily in the chaos. Sansa had put her head in her hands for a moment after the reporting man left. Brienne had felt she might do the same. 

“We could clear enough floor space in my quarters for some simple drills,” she offers.

“Your-?” he begins, his eyebrows climbing. She barely has time to twitch into a frown. He swallows whatever it was and blinks at her apologetically. 

The dragons start screeching distantly. They like to fly and scream at first and last light like monstrous, safeguarding songbirds. They all turn their faces up, sunset streaking what feels like the first colour she’s seen in days through the sky. The dragons don’t pass above the courtyard.

“We’ll begin tomorrow?” says Podrick, attention wandering back to the keep. Soon there will be food in the main hall. 

Jaime nods to her. She thinks there’s something like anticipation in his eyes. The sky might be red, but the light is staining him softly pink. He’s shivering.

“Put one of our cloaks on if you’re just going to stand there doing nothing,” she tells him. 

She turns back to Podrick who is rubbing at his eyes, shoulders rounded.

“Let’s make the most of the last light,” she tells Pod, squaring up. Pod rotates his shoulders and raises his blunted sword. 

After the first pass, Brienne separates to let Pod strategise again and circles him. Jaime has Oathkeeper gathered under his right arm and is battling fur with the other. 

She steps quickly and knocks Pod’s sword efficiently from his hand. He stares down at it, utterly dismayed. 

She waits a moment and then hisses, “Help him,” as quietly as possible. Pod glances over at Jaime. He’s going to drop the sword or, more importantly, the cloaks. The ground is not dry or clean. 

“If you want to put your cloak around him, my lady, you shouldn’t ask me to do it for you,” he replies. Then, worse, he looks like he’s going to die of remorse at her flush. The bruising on his face looks ghastly when he screws his face up like that. 

“Just hold Oathkeeper and the cloak,” she snaps, “please, Podrick.”

“Alright,” he says, “I’m sorry, my lady.” He tips slightly on his feet for a moment. Brienne reaches out to right him, concerned, but he catches himself.

“These furs weigh as much as I do,” Jaime says, when Pod takes the extra burden from him, quiet frustration in his voice. He swings the remaining cloak around himself easily enough and throws the extra back over his arm. He takes Oathkeeper and her sword belt back and tucks them away inside the fur.

“Let’s get on with it,” Brienne calls, trying not to look at Jaime. She watches Pod instead, intently, but he seems steady enough now, moving assuredly to catch up his sword. He’s just pale and tired. They’re all that. 

She glances sidelong at Jaime. It’s her cloak. Pod’s is darker around the neck and shorter too. Jaime is looking at her again. He nods his thanks. Pod is scrutinising her with his kind eyes. Brienne flexes her sword arm. She’s only been standing and walking behind Sansa all day. She’s done far more with far less rest and comfort. It’s Pod who has really been working. Still, he squares up, looking determined. 

She taps her sword to Pod’s. She loses herself in movement and the puzzle of giving Pod a challenge and not a beating. 

“I see you’re finding yourself at home here,” Jon Snow says, voice emerging from the darkness that has fallen. She turns and finds him eyeing the fur around Jaime’s shoulders. 

“Lord Snow,” Jaime says, tightly. Jon Snow’s face twitches at the title. 

He says flatly, “I can’t say I wouldn’t have preferred never to set eyes on you again, but I do respect that you came north to die with us.” Jaime - Brienne gives thanks to all the gods - keeps his mouth shut. “But, my sister and I, we’d like to speak with you.”

Brienne wants to interrupt, but she doesn’t quite dare, unable to follow it up with any title, still not knowing what would be right. Sansa only calls him Jon. Lack of deference would feel strange, but he’s neither king anymore, Sansa says, nor Eddard Stark’s heir until the queen legitimises him, when presumably she will marry him. He’s not even straightforwardly alive; he was brought back by the woman whose magic Stannis used to kill Lord Renly. 

And who is she, to demand information about Jaime. She vouched for him, yes. But her command ended with the night king’s death. He’s neither her soldier, subject, lord, nor her family. Jaime has had a disagreement with Tyrion. She cannot imagine what could have made them want to be apart after that night, but she has not missed his knowing looks. Now she wishes he was here. Her heart is beating fast from the fight. Jaime half bows his consent, turning his eyes towards her. 

“It will be now,” says Jon Snow, addressing her instead. Brienne draws herself together. “My sister requested I fetch you as well, ser, if you don’t mind waiting for your meal.” 

She hurries to wrap her sword belt back around her waist and she takes her cloak from Jaime as well. Jon Snow watches the performance without comment. The fur is warm. Her cheeks are hot. Pod bunches his hands into his cloak and nods at her. She leaves the tourney swords with him.

***

The room Jon shows them to is not the room Sansa and the Starks have been using for their audiences. They climb up to the top of the keep, through the oldest, draughtiest staircases to Sansa’s own chambers. Brienne has seldom been here. It’s not like being Renly’s knight. Sansa has a woman here to help her with her hair and clothes and she’d looked after herself when they were at Castle Black and on the road. It’s not a knight’s place to help a lady with all that.

Jon ushers them into the unguarded room. 

“Gods,” says Jon Snow, “why are we all here? That wasn’t what was agreed.”

Sansa twitches her mouth into a disappointed little line. The queen is standing by the fire with her unsullied commander, the spymaster, and the young woman who advises her by her side. Arya is reclined in one of the rickety chairs by the ornate table Sansa sits behind. 

“Where is my brother?” Jaime demands, throwing up his chin, and then he struggles to compose his face. 

Brienne tries to stand a respectful distance back from the rest of them while keeping both his and Sansa’s expressions properly in view. She tries not to crowd the Queen, feeling twice her height. Brienne has never been this close to her before. She has a vicious red graze running the length of her jaw. She looks like a person who rides dragons. She walks smartly forward to consider Jaime who suddenly lengthens his spine, rearing up. He hasn’t a scratch on him. 

“You’re still here,” says Daenerys Targaryen, “Why?” There is a very long nervous moment in the close room where Brienne watches Jaime’s chest heave through fear, straight into anger. “I once thought that Drogon had burnt you right out of the world. It was rather satisfying. I have been idly imagining the inevitability of catching you on the road south.” 

“Only idly?” asks Jaime. 

“You charged him. With a spear.” 

Brienne jerks, physically. She hadn’t known that. The queen’s spymaster folds his hands. The queen adds, explanatory, “I consider my dragons my family. My children.”

She sounds so hyperbolically severe that Brienne expects a joke to follow. Brienne tears her eyes from Jaime’s stupidly climbing eyebrows to see Sansa watching the two of them intently. 

“A failed attempt,” Jaime says, through bared teeth, “age comes for us all.” Then he pinches his mouth closed. 

Daenerys’ eyes light with triumph. Brienne wants to reach out and put her hands around his neck, finish him off before anyone else gets the chance to do it. This whole thing is a blatant attempt to throw him off guard, and he’s falling for it. She can really see, for the first time, that he spent all day sorting through the burnt bones of dead men. 

“I said that I would wait until after the battle with the dead, and I have. Tomorrow I expect you to face me properly.”

“There will be a trial?” Brienne asks. Jaime’s eyes are wide as he glances up at her. She hadn’t meant to speak. She can feel the thickness of everyone’s attention. “Your grace,” she adds belatedly, mortified, somewhere underneath the rising tide of fear. She lets herself glance again to Sansa again who is avoiding her eye. This isn’t like before, there isn’t a clear recourse. 

Daenerys doesn’t look at her, giving Jaime a smile that could almost be pleasant. 

“Of sorts,” she says.

Jaime huffs his breath out of his nose, says imperiously, “I’ve lived through Targaryens before.”

“Is that a threat?” Jon Snow asks, suddenly present in a way Brienne has rarely seen from him, “You’re really in no position to be making threats.” 

“Jon,” Sansa interrupts, finally rising from her chair, “Jon, the people need to see the two of you at dinner and we agreed that tonight we would just pose questions, not look for answers.” 

“Jon asked him a question,” says the queen, but Jon steps back and acknowledges, “The people do need to see us.”

It looks like the thought of going to his people brings him no pleasure at all. Brienne’s father had always looked forward to visitors and feasts, to their bannermen, such that they were, being made welcome in their home. Jaime is their guest. They can’t just kill him. 

“Thank you, Jon,” Sansa says, and she reaches across the table for him. He squeezes her hand, face lightening while he looks at her. 

“You have tonight to consider how honest you wish to be with us.” Daenerys says to Jaime, before she dismisses him entirely. 

She turns to catch Jon’s hand in hers for a quick moment too, stepping close to him before she sweeps out of the room with Jon and her carefully expressionless general and advisors following behind them.

Jaime swallows and, once the door has closed behind them, he says to Sansa for reasons Brienne cannot begin to comprehend, “My lady, you remind me of my sister.” 

Sansa regards him coolly, but Brienne can see her hands flex in her lap. Arya who has been so still as to completely escape notice, suddenly puts a hand on the knife at her hip. Brienne sees Jaime’s right arm twitch reflexively. 

“Arya, you get out too.” 

Arya smirks and rises. She nods to Sansa from behind Jaime’s shoulder before she too slips from the room. Brienne is left alone with the two of them.

Jaime flicks his eyes towards her, chest moving only slightly, but still unnaturally quickly, and looks back to where Sansa is repositioning herself, straight-backed and alert in her chair. She’d seemed so tired when Brienne left her this afternoon.

“Take a seat,” Sansa says, and Jaime collapses into the chair Arya had vacated. 

“Wine?” Sansa asks, already pouring him a cup.

Jaime takes it and looks at it skeptically. It’s not poisoned, thinks Brienne, insulted; Sansa wouldn’t. 

“If I wanted you dead tonight, I would have allowed you to keep talking.” Sansa says dismissively, “I can’t say that it would be any particular tragedy to me if Jaime Lannister were to be eaten by a dragon,” - Jaime drinks the whole cup in two swallows - “but Jon and I agreed that you might be useful.”

Jaime’s face closes down, finally reaching composure and he sets the cup precisely back on the table. He’s not going to give them information that will hurt his sister, Brienne realises. He’s going to die for her after all. He consciously relaxes into the chair. 

“I don’t need to tell you what we’ll ask,” says Sansa. “Think carefully tonight.” 

Jaime does not straighten, Sansa does not bend. 

“Is this the end of the puppet show? It was very good.” He jerks his head almost towards Brienne. Now his anger is turned inwards. Good. It has been poorly played on his part, even Brienne can see that. Sansa raises a discreet eyebrow at Brienne.

“I’m curious,” says Sansa, “what advice would you give to people wanting to survive Targaryens?” 

Brienne’s breathing stills. Sansa is fixed on Jaime, who has brought his head up again. 

“Trouble with your queen already, my lady?” he asks. Sansa waits him out. Jaime exhales, sinking back into his chair. “Charge her and her dragon with a spear?” he says flippantly. “Truthfully, I’ve no head for these things. Ask my brother, wherever he is.” There are teeth in that. 

“Your brother loves her.” 

“Not like yours.” 

Sansa is sharp eyed. She pours him more wine. 

“Why are you so afraid of her, specifically?” she asks. 

“I’m not afraid,” he sneers, twitching in his seat. 

“I’m as likely to pronounce you guilty of crimes against my family and order your death as she is,” Sansa says calmly, Brienne observes her carefully, and it occurs to her, that she does not know if Sansa has spoken with Bran. “Is it just the ghost of her father?” 

Jaime rotates the cup against the table. 

“I spoke to some of my men who are here at Winterfell.”

“They are not your men,” Sansa warns.

“They knelt to your queen, that’s true enough, after she burned Lord Randyll and Dickon Tarly in front of them, on the very same day that they were captured.” 

Brienne had not known that either. The southern men do not speak to her, the northmen neither, not even these past days after the battle. She learnt long ago that if she goes about very quickly, with a hand on a sword, then no one can say anything unpleasant to her. It also means they never say anything at all. From Sansa’s careful expression, it seems likely that she had also been unaware of this. 

Jaime picks up the cup again, “Do you know what her father did to your uncle and grandfather?”

He should just tell her about the wildfire. It will transform the way she sees him, Brienne knows it. 

“Yes. My lord father said they were unjustly beheaded by a mad king,” says Sansa, Joffery’s frothing ghost suddenly in the room doubly, with his sword at Jaime’s hip. 

“No,” says Jaime. “There was a trial by combat. You grandfather against the king’s fire. He boiled in his armour. They made your uncle watch with a long leash tied around his neck and a sword just out of reach. He died choking. They were not good deaths.” Sansa absorbs this information. “You didn’t know about the Tarlys. What has made you afraid of her?” Jaime asks. 

“I don’t fear her,” says Sansa. 

“Well,” says Jaime, “then neither do I.”

Sansa considers and then pours two more cups of wine. She nods for Brienne to sit, and passes her the cup. Brienne takes a cautious sip.

“I want names,” says Sansa, “who told you about the Tarlys.”

Jaime’s lips pinch. For the first time Sansa looks openly offended. 

“I’m going to talk to them. Reassure them. Find out exactly what happened.” 

Jaime lists the names, maps out the power structure of the few hundred surviving men. 

“I’m surprised more of them haven’t slipped away in the night.” Sansa says, turning cold eyes up from her note taking. “Although they would only be abandoning us to die of exposure; once you’re this far north it’s difficult to hide and the cold is only going to get worse.” Jaime tips his untouched wine to her in acknowledgement.

“They see the dragons flying overhead every morning and evening. We all saw what they did for us during the battle. Who knows if the Queen is up there, looking.” 

Sansa considers him again. “You are afraid. And I will acknowledge that there is sense in that. But she need not be her father. None of us are our parents.” He puts his cup down.

“That’s true enough. I am no Tywin Lannister.”

“No,” Sansa, with a pointed sweep of her eyes. It sounds like an insult. Jaime just smiles. “Ser Jaime, I must ask you to give me Joffery’s sword.”

He’s smooth and practised unbuckling the sword belt one handed and he lays it carefully on the table where Sansa does not touch it. 

“I must also ask you to stay in the inner castle from now on. Please ask Brienne’s squire to accompany you on my behalf when you must leave your living quarters, particularly tonight. The men are going to be restless - there are to announcements this evening - and your presence will not help with discipline.” 

Jaime bows his head to her again, his mouth thin, although this request will make no difference to his days. 

“Finally,” she says, “I must thank you, for your courage in the battle and your service afterwards. I urge you to think carefully about what you are going to say tomorrow. You should share everything you can.” 

He won’t lie, Brienne knows that with complete certainty, but he might just say nothing and burn for no practical reason at all: Varys’s birds never stop coming and going and Sansa gets more correspondence every day. He sets his jaw. She remembers the weight and warmth of Renly’s corpse in her arms. Jaime’s face replaced Renly’s in those nightmares long ago. She wishes she was less of a hopeful fool. 

Jaime murmurs, “My lady,” and looks worriedly back at Brienne before he opens the door. She wants to go with him and lie down next to him and sleep. 

She turns back to Sansa.

Sansa says, “I know you’re… fond of him.”

It sounds less like tact and more like a euphemism. She vouched for him, and now he feels like her responsibility, or rather just hers, for court if not in fact. 

“Brienne, would you tell me, if there was anything I needed to know?” asks Sansa. 

Sansa looks icily composed but underneath that Brienne thinks she has prepared for disappointment. She must know Brienne will not lie to her. She never swore to keep Jaime’s council, only Sansa’s and besides, this isn’t his secret. If he gets through tomorrow and it all comes tumbling down the very next day because they deceived Lady Catelyn’s children she won’t be able to stand it. She does not like to think herself a coward. 

“My lady,” says Brienne into the quiet of the crackling fire, tearing it from her chest, “Ser Jaime pushed your brother from the tower window.” 

Sansa screws her eyes closed and breathes out something that looks strangely like relief. The blue under her eyes has been a constant, but it’s more noticeable when she pinches them closed. 

“Why did he admit this to you?” she asks.

“He confirmed Lady Catelyn’s accusation before she released him, years ago. I believe he wanted your mother to kill him: he thought the men of your brother’s camp would be coming for him that night. It did not change your mother’s determination to get you and sister back from the Lannisters.” 

It looks as though every one of her words is draining vitality from Sansa’s face. 

“Thank you, Brienne. It’s better to know than to suspect.” says Sansa, “Bran saw him with his sister then.” Brienne stares miserably at her tired, closed face.

“He’s spoken with Bran about it,” says Brienne, wavering suddenly on the edge of something that does feel like a breach of trust, breaking Jaime’s confidence and making an embarrassing play to mitigate his actions all at once. Sansa’s eyes snap open. 

“Bran knows?” Now she looks betrayed. “He didn’t tell me.” Brienne feels too sick to speak again. Sansa pushes the ruby-studded sword away from herself. It’s so obviously the sister to the sword on Brienne’s belt.

“If they had been discovered then and King Robert had killed every last one of them, it would have spared my family so much pain,” Sansa says, fingers still hovering over the scabbard, “Yes, there were their children, but Joffrey was already a little monster. I was too trusting then to see any of it.” 

Brienne frowns at her. 

“You were a child, too,” she says. 

“Yes, with stories of queens, their golden knights, and pretty princes in my heart,” says Sansa derisively, “They all looked the part.” Sansa looks the part now, Lady of Winterfell, regal, icy and dire wolf fierce. 

“I grew up with the same dreams,” Brienne says, strangely exposed by the admission next to Sansa’s contempt for her childhood self. It would be simpler if Brienne had spent the early, fuzzy days of her childhood dreaming only of knighthoods and horses. Sansa tilts her head, curious. 

“I learned to dance as well as fight,” says Brienne and then when Sansa’s face falls she says, “Sword work is better.” She does not want that old pity she’d seen on Lady Catelyn to wash Sansa’s face. It’s even true. She likes to win. Sword work is expansive in the way dance never had been. 

“Arya would agree with you,” says Sansa, “She wanted to be a boy, always tearing her dresses getting into mischief. Our mother despaired.” 

Brienne’s father had simply had suitable clothing made for her to wear. She wants him to write back to her. She wants him to be alive. If Brienne had really been a boy she might never have wanted to leave Tarth. How sunny and small that mirrored life would have been, absent of all these people and all her strange victories. 

Brienne says, “I’m sorry I didn’t think to tell you about Bran sooner,” and Sansa blinks at her 

“Brienne,” - she gathers herself - “you realise that if someone were looking at this with a cruel eye, expecting the worst of people, they might question your judgement, your previous reputation and maybe even your loyalty when it comes to this man.” 

It hurts. 

“I swore my service to you, my lady. The only thing I promised him was to find you and your sister and to fulfil his vow to your mother.” 

Sansa comes around the table to sit with Brienne. She reaches to take Brienne’s hand in hers. Her touch is gentle and her grey eyes so very kind. Brienne feels far less at ease than she had with Sansa on the other side of the table. Sansa leans in. 

“Jaime Lannister is a handsome man. And a golden knight, once upon a time,” she says. Brienne immediately wants to be able to deny and dismiss it. He’s been a fantasy and a wish. She falls in love with the beautiful and the unobtainable, she knows this, and she’s becoming aware - with every day that Jaime is within reach, soft eyed and attentive - that there had been a simplicity in that distance. Sansa’s gaze is unrelenting. “How could you vouch for him, knowing what you did?” 

Brienne struggles. Part of her is angry at the framing of this question next to the word _handsome_ , that Sansa has seen a debt balanced and taken it for such a petty weakness. She hopes she’s not a fool. She hopes that’s not all this is. Brienne walked behind Sansa with Theon Greyjoy, who everyone says burned children and hung them above the gate claiming they were Starks. Of course the poor man died with honour and considerate tidiness while defending Bran. 

“It felt like it might be within my power to keep him safe. We have kept each other safe,” she says, as Sansa’s eyes flicker searchingly over her face. 

She can’t lay out the bear pit, or his hand; her life or maidenly honour or any of it against Sansa’s brother so directly. She certainly can’t lay out the terrifying hope she feels when she looks at him now. When she’d decided to grow up, she’d tried to cut that out of herself. 

Sansa squeezes her hands, “You believe he’s a changed man?” she says, failing but at least trying to suppress the condescension in her voice. 

“I believe that he’s the same man in changed circumstances,” says Brienne, “He changed his circumstances. I stand by what I said.” Sansa sits back, considering Brienne carefully. “This does not change that my duty is to you, my lady. You have my loyalty, my love, and my sword.” 

“Ser Brienne,” Sansa says “Sometimes I think you walked out of the songs I loved as a child.” She props herself up straight again. “What happens to him tomorrow will matter deeply to you.”

Brienne nods her head, sharply, although it was hardly a question, a familiar heat creeping into her cheeks. Sansa softens. Brienne wouldn’t have noticed the transformation if watching Sansa and admiring her fierceness hasn’t come to take up so much of her life. 

“Tell him to control his tongue,” - Brienne nods again - “and tell him that no one can help him unless he helps himself.” Her head is still moving. “You needn’t come at first light tomorrow. I have no need for you. Sleep. Take some time to convince him to speak frankly with us. We need information that he has.” Brienne nods vigorously again. Sansa smiles at her. “Brienne, I want you to know how much I value your loyalty, your service, your integrity, and courage.” She’s terribly sincere and her gaze is unflinching. Brienne knows she’s been thanking everyone who comes before her, she’s watched it happen. It’s still nearly as breathtaking as the sword touching her shoulder while Jaime’s voice intoned the vows. 

Brienne walks out through the falling snow, boots crunching through the fresh, new covering on the ground, careful not to turn an ankle on hidden debris, to the bottom of the First Keep. She circles it until she can look up at a high, arched window and the remnants of climbing ivy. The little clinging tendrils are curling brown where they aren’t burned away. This must be the place. The grey stone is scorched black with more recent violence. 

She doesn’t wish that she could visit the bear pit. In a song, a good, true knight loves deeply, chastely and distantly. It’s how she had tried to love Renly, pouring that love into service. Loras had loved him truly and intimately. Neither love had kept him alive. In the songs, that distance eroding is always when the real story starts. Everything after that is always a tragedy. She walked into battle with his colours on her belt and they crawled back out of the nightmare together. Distance is impossible when all his heroism and horror is right there in front of her, asking to be of service, or pressed up against her and Podrick at every meal, talking about horses. It had been impossible even when she had been returning him to his sister.

***

“Tyrion was telling us about the fighting pits in Essos, where slaves die for glory in front of enormous baying crowds,” says Jaime, tapping the food a little further towards her when she just sits staring at it. She doesn’t understand why Tyrion is here if he wasn’t there earlier when they actually had need of him. She doesn’t know how to talk to Jaime with him here.

“It still just sounds like a tourney,” says Podrick. 

“No!” says Tyrion, “Even worse!” He has, Brienne realises, conscious of the still unfamiliar taste lingering on her tongue, had quite a bit to drink. 

“Clearly it’s worse, Tyrion. What’s wrong with a good tournament?” asks Jaime, as Brienne reluctantly scrapes sparse meat off the boiled white bone. It’s good that they are speaking to each other again, she supposes, although Tyrion has never sat with them before. Family should be brought together by crisis. 

“Ser,” says Tyrion, and it takes Brienne a moment to realise that he’s addressing her, “weren’t you entered into servitude to Renly after your victory in his tournament?” Brienne deepens her frown. 

Jaime plucks Tyrion’s cup from his hands and holds it out of his reach with an apologetic look for Brienne, saying, “Service in the Kingsguard is a great honour, not a subjugation.”

“The Rainbow Guard,” Brienne corrects automatically; her cloak had been blue, chosen from Tarth’s banners of sun and moon on sea blue and rosy pink.

“Jaime,” says Tyrion sadly, “You of all people-. Who could possibly be worthy of that kind of service?” 

Jaime catches her eye for a flushed moment. Unwarranted guilt churns her stomach. 

“Tyrion, you used to be much better at drinking,”

Brienne cannot bear it.

“I have given up drinking,” says Tyrion. 

“I told her,” Brienne interrupts, her voice louder than she had intended. 

The next gathering on the long table turns brief unfriendly looks upon their huddled group. Brienne does not know them by name - some of Royce’s loyal sons of minor lords from the Vale. Jaime’s eyes go wide as he takes in her distress. Then he jerks towards her across the table. 

“About the pyromancer?” he hisses. 

He looks wounded. Brienne squares her shoulders. That knowledge feels too much like holding him liquid in her hands. She won’t betray that confidence, not even to save his life. 

“Not that,” she says. 

“Oh fuck,” says Tyrion, snatching his cup from Jaime’s slackened grip. “This is why tonight is for drinking.” 

Podrick is looking between them, frozen over his meal.

Jaime looks strangely relieved. “Oh. It was inevitable, I suppose.” He scrubs a hand over his face, leans his elbows on the table and puts his hands behind his neck, his hair falling down over his bowed head. “It’s alright, Brienne.”

Tyrion turns to him, “Really? It’s alright? First Varys starts whispering disloyalty, now the honourable maid is at it. This will give Sansa time to sleep on it at least. Fuck.” 

Brienne smarts at being compared to an apparently traitorous spymaster for her sensible honesty. She knows Sansa better than he does. Sansa doesn’t need time to sleep on it. 

“She already knew,” says Brienne, “But I told her that you told Lady Catelyn, so now she knows with certainty that it is true.”

“She should confirm it to Jon tonight,” says Tyrion, “I’ll talk to her. Or-. No. She’ll make the best choice.”

“Should I leave, ser?” says Podrick.

“Not unless you want to, Podrick,” says Jaime, and then very quietly, “It may be of professional interest for you to know that I threw Brandon Stark from the window at the top of Winterfell’s First Keep, oh, many years ago now.”

“Will you please shut up,” says Tyrion.

“Gods,” says Podrick. Brienne watches his big brown eyes find Bran up at the high table. Bran is watching them, his face completely untroubled. Brienne shivers. Pod turns to Tyrion, “My lord, I don’t think this is the kind of thing they’ll feel better about in the morning.”

“Thank you so much, Pod,” says Tyrion. Jaime puts a cautious hand on Tyrion’s shoulder. 

He says softly, “Tyrion, I don’t know why you’re taking this so badly. You knew this was likely coming. We talked about this before the battle, before I-,” he looks unwillingly nervous when he says, “Isn’t this your gladiatorial arena?” 

Tyrion drains his cup and nods determinedly, clasping Jaime’s hand briefly with his own. 

“Quite right. This is my moment: I’ll be your champion,” Tyrion says. “We should discuss strategy and what they might want. Didn’t you once try to save me from Father with a promise that you’d-.”

At the high table, Jon Snow scrapes his chair on the stone as he stands. The great white wolf, previously lolling between the Starks and the assembled masses, picks up his head and whines like a puppy. The hall slowly hushes itself without Jon needing to shout for quiet. Sansa is watching tensely and, Brienne flinches to discover, the queen is staring vacantly down at the back of Tyrion’s head where he’s dropped it into his hands. Jaime looks at Brienne and mouths into the quiet rustling of the hall, “It’s alright.” Brienne’s jaw hurts.

“Winter is here,” says Jon Snow, and he raises his cup high, “but we will live to see spring.” His voice breaks but the people crammed into the great hall erupt anyway. 

Jaime watches her, a quiet smile on his face and his cup barely raised to head height. Brienne looks to the queen. 

Usually, when Jon Snow makes a pronouncement, the queen will follow up with one of her own, but this time Jon Snow continues. “If we want to live,” he says, loud and rough, “we will have to look after each other.” The substance of the matter is, a soft kind of rationing begins tomorrow. Those in attendance will need to speak to their men. 

The mood in the hall turns sombre after that. It’s much too quiet to talk. A dutifully blank-faced boy with a messy shock of mousy hair brings them another jug of water and then almost seems to hover. Tyrion is drunk enough that it’s comically exaggerated when he eyes the boy suspiciously for a moment before affecting disinterest. Without his reaction, Brienne wouldn’t have noticed. She takes note of his face. She thinks she recognises him from the scurry of battle preparation in the smithy, but there were too many grubby, dark-haired northerners with unfriendly faces to know. 

“Let’s go back to your quarters, I’m not done talking to you,” says Tyrion.

“We’ll go to my room,” Brienne hurries to say. She needs to be part of this discussion. 

“I would make a lecherous comment, but I’m currently very angry with you, ser,” says Tyrion. 

Jaime tells him to watch his mouth and drags him from the bench. Glaring at them some more makes Brienne feel much better. As she leads their little party from the hall, everyone at the high table is turned to watch Varys, who has brought a scroll for Daenerys to read. She’s glad to have fallen back beneath their notice. 

The four of them trail along the draughty, low ceilinged passageways still lined with raucous men and women eating and drinking. Either the news of the rationing has not spread this far, or the more common folk have decided to enjoy their last night of plenty. There are too many to fit into the Great Hall and the Guards’ Hall, even in shifts and almost anyone without a highborn name or a significant military position has now been relegated to collecting food and jostling for the least draughty corners of the castle or eating out in the camps. 

Back in her room, with Podrick stationed outside by Tyrion to ward of imagined eavesdroppers, Tyrion wants to talk about practicalities only. Brienne had hoped he might offer insight into the queen’s position. Her voice must surely have the most relevance. 

“The issue is that you have absolutely no clear political motivations of your own but just enough strategic potential to be dangerous in the right hands,” says Tyrion. ‘If you had been a bigger failure as a military commander that would have helped you now as well.”

Jaime says, “It’s not going to be about politics, it will be about-”

“Of course it’s about politics. This is my arena, like you said. We’ll argue that you’re a hostage,” Tyrion says, “and a valuable one.”

“He’s not a hostage,” says Brienne.

“I’m a deserter who either murdered or crippled family of every person at that high table tonight.”

Tyrion makes a gesture like he’s considering murder himself. 

“There were only two families represented,” he says, “although, I am impressed that you have found a way over dramatise your current situation.” 

Jaime hovers over the end of her bed until Brienne nods to him, and then he collapses to perch on the edge of it.

“I’m not a useful hostage. She won’t bargain for me now.” Brienne crushes her teeth together.

“I know that, but they don’t.” says Tyrion, annoyed, and he glances at the door, “keep your voice low.” 

“I do think it would still hurt her to watch me die,” says Jaime, morosely. 

Brienne sits heavily in the chair by the fire. 

“Do not tell me that,” says Tyrion. “It’s my job to advise on how to hurt her.” 

He paces, twitching his hands, off in his own world. He looks like he’s practicing a speech. Then he casts around the room.

“Why did you invite us here when you only have one chair?” he asks, unaccountably outraged. 

“Tyrion,” Jaime warns. 

Brienne hesitates and then levers herself to her feet, offering him the seat. She’d moved the chair from the desk to the fire as soon as Sansa had given her the room. She hasn’t needed another. Tyrion waves her away. 

“No, I’m going to talk to Sansa before the council meets tonight. The two of us will work something out.” The implication being, Brienne supposes, that she and Jaime are of no use in his scheming after all. Telling Sansa was the right thing to do, she feels that with unwavering certainty. It won’t have hurt him - quite the opposite; Brienne is confident. Or she had been. Tyrion pauses, “His survival is still important to you, this - tonight with Sansa - this wasn’t you backing out.” It’s not really a question. Still, Brienne shakes her head, steeling herself not to be embarrassed, she already committed herself in the great hall before the queen and all the northern lords and tonight, again with Sansa. It's not a matter of any clear obligation or vow. It's a debt, she supposes, that she's not interested in weighing out on a set of scales. Jaime sits back up on the bed, says Tyrion’s name lowly. Tyrion looks very satisfied. Brienne scowls at him. 

“Podrick, come protect me from the drunks,” Tyrion calls as he throws open the door and he flicks a speculative look between her and Jaime on the bed, “Lady Brienne can be relied upon to supervise.” She nods poor Podrick along after him when he hovers, propping the door open with a shoulder. Someone is concerned with her maidenly innocence apparently.

***

“Brienne,” says Jaime, into the empty room, “I am sorry.”

It sounds like defeat and looks as bad. She doesn’t want to hear that with him still sat at the foot of her bed. His hands are resting in the furs there. He let Tyrion strategise. They should do the same. 

“Sansa says to watch your tongue.”

He glances up at her, suddenly sharp again.

“I can already do that,” he says, reclining back onto one elbow on the bed. He looks like he’s trying to formulate some echo of an invitation in his body. He’s been so terribly sincere with her since he came to Winterfell, she doesn’t want him to try to hurt her with the suggestion. She hasn’t had to say no to him. She doesn’t want an offer like the one he threw at Lady Catelyn, where she won’t be able to say yes, once it’s only a joke and a weapon after all. “If this is to be my very last night-”

She sighs and takes a couple of steps towards him, aiming for the desk on the other side of her bed. He seizes into stillness so abruptly that her steps falter. Jaime’s wide eyes meet hers for a paralysing moment. She pretends to ignore it. She gives him a wide berth. Once she is safely past he rolls to his feet and attempts a casual stroll towards the fire. 

“It’s alright,” he reassures, as if she was the one jumping like a startled cat, “Bad taste. Bad habit. I apologise.” 

She throws her cloak over the desk and turns back to him. He crouches down to warm both his hands in front of the flames. He’s even turning the gloved gold hand as if he can really feel the heat. 

“At least if it ends in dragon’s fire it will make a good verse in a song,” he says. “Although, by coming here, I’ve ensured I’ll be remembered as a villain no matter who wins the next war,” he frowns, absorbing this. Brienne unbuckles her sword belt. “At least we all outlived Robert bloody Baratheon,” he mutters. 

“What about a whole song for the man who slew the wicked King Aerys and was disgraced, but came north to fight the dead and swear allegiance to his returning daughter,” she says, laying Oathkeeper over her cloak.

Jaime turns to smile at her shaking his head, “There are more caveats to what I can swear to her than any person knowing my history could accept,” he says, “especially now. I’ve served my last queen.” 

He’ll have to serve someone. They won’t grant him exile, of that Brienne is sure. They won’t let him run off to Essos and the free cities. No one would trust an oathbreaker to stay put. 

“I’d worry less about what you can’t swear and more about what you can.” 

By the fire, he flicks his hand dismissively. 

“Have you sworn to her? Has Sansa?” he says, “No. Jon Snow has renounced his claim to a northern kingship but what they have here at Winterfell still isn’t a Targaryen court. She’ll need to make it hers somehow.” 

“By burning you? Don’t flatter yourself,” she says, but her guts twist at his quirked smile. She crosses the room to be closer to him, gripping the back of her chair. She’s long reconciled the idea that maybe three hundred men in this castle wouldn’t gather and cheer to see him tried and executed, but she’s not sure they would have the stomach to cheer for dragon’s fire like they would for Jon Snow’s sword. It’s not impossible. If it’s fear the queen wants, then the performance has apparently worked for her in the past. She allows the current to sweep her past that. Sansa wouldn’t be spending her precious time concerning herself with Brienne’s loyalty if she expected Jaime to be dead tomorrow. Brienne trusts Sansa’s judgement. 

“I haven’t sworn myself to her directly, but I follow Lady Sansa, who follows Jon Snow, who follows the Queen,” says Brienne, a simple recounting of the world as it is, “She doesn’t need to make it hers. It is hers.”

“You know power is never so simple,” he says. “And you’re no household knight to fetch and carry for the Starks. You are heir to Evenfall. Your house answers to Storm’s End, not Winterfell.”

Brienne breathes through the stinging hurt. It’s a wound she has picked open herself since she handed that little scroll to Samwell Tarly. She’d given Tarth up, or, she had believed that at the time, except she looks at Jaime and suddenly it all seems possible - if only he’d stop being so pig headed and try properly to live. If she could take it up now, couldn’t she have taken it up then? That would have been the dutiful thing, and now her father is likely dead, without ever reading of her love, triumph or regret. She drags the chair out of the way and crouches down on the rug next to him. 

She leans into his burning light and says, “Don’t scold me about my duty. You should be Lord of Casterly Rock. Who is looking after your people?” 

He looks away from her, abashed. He lays out his gloves to the side of the fire and drags his fine, light cloak over his head. He really needs something more substantial.

“I didn’t plan to die when I came north,” he says, “nor at any moment in all of that nightmare, but I didn’t allow myself to think about an afterwards. I can see clearly enough that death seems rather likely; a predictable outcome of my having come. Deserved, even. I didn’t plan for living, but the idea of my death doesn’t seem real either.”

Brienne hadn’t allowed herself to think about what would come next either, but now it is all she thinks about. He’s watching her, waiting. 

“I thought we were all dead,” she can’t quite control the shudder in her voice. She admits, “It hardly seems real to me that we aren’t.”

She collapses back to sit on the rug, and after a moment he follows her. It had been Podrick’s voice gliding over that terribly old song that really made it whole in her hands. A story next to some adjacent, abstract truth of loss and pain. In the aftermath, Brienne walked the walls and looked down at the fields of dead men and felt like she would drown in other people’s grief. Jaime watches her, sad eyed. He has no business feeling sorry for her. She has no right to pain. Everything has worked out very well for her.

She tells him, “My father hasn’t written back. It seems likely he’s dead.” Jaime’s reply had come so quickly that the bird can hardly have landed before it was back in the air. Tarly had given the sealed scroll to Brienne and Brienne had given it to Jaime. He’d asked if she needed to read it over and then disappeared with it when she declined. It’s been too long. A reply isn’t coming. She swallows down the suffocating tide.

“I’m so very sorry, Brienne.” 

Jaime puts his hand awkwardly on her shoulder and she jerks her head, not away, just a sharp exorcism of emotion through movement. She wants to get up and walk, but she doesn’t want him to take his hand away. He slides his hand to her neck and brushes his thumb into her hairline and she twists to turn her face into him until she can feel his winter-rough knuckles on her jaw. It’s all so tantalisingly possible and it may be too late.

“Will you go back?” he asks cautiously. “Won’t you need to find out?” 

“I gave it up by leaving,” she says. “They might have thought me dead for years now. I’ve no right to interfere or expect news.” If he is alive, she should not have reminded her father of his grief. Not without knowing. Perhaps they hate her. Perhaps they believe that she murdered Renly.

Jaime frowns, looking like he’s struggling to square this new information with his picture of her. 

“I couldn’t marry,” she tells him. 

“Couldn’t?” he asks, cautious. She clenches her jaw. 

“I defeated the last suitor in combat.” She watches his eyes widen. “I broke his collarbone. His ribs. It was an effective end to any future betrothals.” 

Jaime’s small smile is slow curling. She doesn’t want to see it or have to reveal that the others had rejected her first. If Sansa has read this wrongly and he really is taken from her she supposes she will go on and live some different life, but this particular hope is a soft lapping wave of scalding water.

“What weapon?” he asks, with poorly concealed delight. 

His hand hooked under her jaw-bone casually turns her face back towards him. She frowns at him but she lets him do it. 

“A mace,” she says, feeling his warm fingers move with her words. “Jaime, why are you here?” 

He takes his hand back. 

“I’ve said. I came because I’d given my word. I can hardly leave.”

“Your sister gave her word, you didn’t. Besides, I meant-.” 

His face darkens for a moment and then realisation dawns. 

“Gods, you’re right,” he says, marvelling. “It felt like it was my promise.” 

She looks away from his slack mouth. She’d searched for Sansa to fulfil her own vow and Jaime’s too. He hadn’t fulfilled his sister’s promise, she reminds herself. He’d come alone and not with her armies. 

He huffs air out through his nose, “I’ve been repeating that, but-. I needn’t have come then. Although I’m sure you’d all be wights without me.” Brienne doesn’t laugh. Eventually, he says gruffly, into her silence, “This is difficult. Aren’t you exhausted? We should have this conversation only if I survive tomorrow.” 

“I’m glad you came,” Brienne tells him. His coming to fight means too much to her for it to be left as a joke. “It was the honourable thing to do.” 

Jaime tips towards her at that, eyes bright in the firelight. Excepting the battle, he’s looked strangely subdued, this version of Jaime, with his darker hair and the fineness of his clothing disguised by its muted colours. Even skeletal and in rags, he’d looked more dangerous than he has these last weeks. Now the firelight is cutting the sharpness back into his face in red and gold. She sees why approaching death doesn’t feel real to him: he looks far too alive.

“Whatever happens, I don’t regret it,” he says. “I’ve never knighted anyone before, but you’re it, Brienne: A true knight. Ser Arthur Dayne himself would have been lucky to serve with you.” 

It twists in her chest. It’s the highest praise in his armoury, judging by the stories he’s been feeding Pod. She envies the apparently always virtuous Arthur Dayne who has been relegated to mere mortality. She’s not sure she can live, frozen for everyone, into a cycle in a song. Surely he’s seen her. She’s scared and scarred and she wants. 

He leans in again, concern at her quiet written over his face, “My lady, ravens get delayed, waylaid, it might-” She cuts him off. She can’t do anything for her father or Tarth here in Winterfell. There’s a chance she can do something for Jaime. 

“Focus on tomorrow,” she says, “Worry about the Targaryen Queen and not the Starks. You must tell her about her father. Properly. Respectfully.” He hesitates. “You saved a whole city, Jaime.”

“I won’t grovel,” he says. Brienne shifts to stand, not wanting to be near him after all, if he’s going to throw this away too. He catches at her sleeve. “She won’t believe me, Brienne,” he says, “It’s not a thing anyone wants to believe their family capable of.” 

Brienne doesn’t know how anyone could look at him and not think he was telling the truth. 

“Sansa will believe you,” she says, although she has no way to convince him of it, “They’ll understand. Like I did.” 

“I know you love them,” says Jaime, “but these Starks are real wolves. I’d rather be dealing with plodding Lord Eddard. He’d just insist on taking my head off cleanly. Little Arya is the only one not pretending.”

“Sansa wouldn’t be so interested if she expected you to die. Believe me.” 

“I do believe you,” he says. “I trust you. I do.” He runs out of words, staring up at her. 

She plunges onwards. “Maybe it’s really like Tyrion says, and it’s about practicality. He understands that world more than I do. Think about how can you serve them.” 

His hand is still on her sleeve, curled into the laced fabric, he doesn’t seem to have noticed. 

“I think you understand plenty,” he says.” You could do it, so well.” She twitches puzzlement at him. “Rule in Tarth,” he adds, explanatory. Her eyes are painfully dry. 

“I couldn’t rule alone,” she says, her heart pounding. He opens his mouth. “It’s not another custom you can wave away because you’ve decided it doesn’t suit you.” He still doesn’t look entirely convinced.

“So you would need to marry anyway,” he purses his mouth unhappily. His eyes catch firelight as they flicker over her face. “Would you even want to marry?” he asks, and it’s like sitting with Sansa’s scrutiny again, a burning exposure, admitting something that feels so much like weakness. She crouches back down to his seated height. Scared, scarred, and selfishly wanting. Fallen out of the songs and the sept and into yesterday’s dirty sheets with everyone else. She meets his eyes as courageously as possible.

“Yes,” she says, “I’d want that.” His eyebrows pinch in concentration and he nods his head, slow movements like everything is happening underwater. 

“Someone whose ribs wouldn’t need breaking and who wouldn’t mind if you snapped their collarbone.” 

She frowns. That’s nearly it. She can’t tell if he thinks that’s a funny turn of phrase while he’s staring fixedly down at his hands, turning the gold slowly, so it glints.” They’re both breathing shallowly.

“You’ll tell the Queen about the Mad King and his pyromancers,” she says, meaning it as a question, but aloud it sounds like a command. 

He tosses his head and avoids her eyes, back in real time. 

“I’ll consider it,” he says. 

Podrick finds them still sitting glumly by the fire, nothing keeping their hands busy. He closes the door swiftly behind himself and latches it, saying unhappily, “The news of the rationing has spread.” 

Brienne stands to get a better look at him, concerned. He looks wrecked again.

“You’ll both stay here,” Brienne decides. 

Podrick falls onto the bed easily and without question. They’ve grown uncivilised in the way they share space, out in the cold north. Jaime unbuckles his belt and shrugs off his outer tunic unselfconsciously. He pushes the question back onto Brienne silently as they drag off their boots. She yanks back the covers for them all and Jaime approaches the bed a little hesitantly. It feels far less indecent that sharing a bed with one man. She’s heard endless campfire bragging but she’s never heard a man admit to that. And besides, it’s after the end of all living things, and she’s a knight, not a lady. It mattered because she belonged to Tarth, and now that might not matter at all. All she desperately wants is for them to be safe and to finally sleep. Everyone else in this castle is riding roughshod over all the customs that pretend to make up respectability. They tug the furs up over themselves.

***

Brienne jolts from sleep as Pod pushes his way back into the room, a tray with three bowls and a pitcher balanced in his arms. She doesn’t know how she slept through him leaving, she’d startled awake more than once in the night. More than once, she’d seen the whites of Jaime or Pod’s eyes in the guttering fire light. Still, she feels warm and the constant twinge of pain behind her eyes has faded. The bruising she knows must still be livid across her back doesn’t pull quite so much as she moves her shoulders against the blankets and furs.

It’s already light outside her little window. The castle will have been awake for hours. The days grew darker as the dead marched closer and their end has not altered the tide of winter. Arya keeps saying with gleeful gloom that their hours of daylight will only get shorter. Jaime is blinking himself awake beside her, sleep-mussed and flushed in the firelight. They’d gone to sleep with Pod between them. He’s scaldingly beautiful. If she really was a man-. 

They all sit cross-legged on the bed to eat their rations. To Brienne it appears to be a fair and satisfying amount of food. She picks at it, drawing it out. She’s been living out of packs for a long time and castle life hasn’t softened her so much that she can’t survive contentedly on a little less than she wants. There is a gulf of difference between lean and starving. 

“I’ll try to be the one who comes for you when it’s time,” she tells Jaime around a mouthful. 

Podrick puts his finished bowl abruptly down on the bed, casting big worried eyes at the two of them. He goes to fetch her cloak and boots. Jaime takes another slow spoonful. 

“Eat,” she tells him and he grimaces down at his bowl. For some reason he’s picked out all the precious peas and stashed them in his belt. 

“Look to yourself,” he says. 

Pod hovers with a filled cup, ready to hand it to her.

“My lady, no one in the kitchens will be happy if I take back wasted food.”

They both reapply themselves to the meal.

Sansa looks purposeful and wolf faced this morning and she has moved back into the larger room behind the great hall that she had been using to entertain guests before last night’s performance of intimacy. Brienne fetches the southern captains whose names Jaime gave to Sansa. Sansa speaks to the soldiers, frankly, clearly and listens to their story. She calls them by name. They’d expected to be dispersed to their homes after they swore themselves to the Queen, but then the Dothraki had just kept moving camp, farther and farther north and the few who had dared to run had been found and cut down quickly. They’d been on a ship twice. 

Brienne looks at their grey, sad faces and knows that if these men are marched south again and their homes are within reach, they will all try to slip away in the night, even if it means dragon’s fire. Their principal current complaint is a fresh one: the rationing. Brienne suspects this will be the refrain Sansa hears every day until winter ends or they all die of starvation, but this first time there is a twist. These men saw the Queen burn wagons full of the Reach’s final harvest. Sansa’s lips barely thin at the news; perhaps she already knew. She praises their courage in the battle against the dead. 

She says, sincere and precise, “I must thank you all, and your men, for your courage in the battle and your service afterwards.”

The Tarly men among them had respect but no love for their lord who was executed with dragon’s fire, but an affectionate and slightly mocking love for his son who was also burned. Brienne suspects they have conjured this love around his memory rather than around his actual person. 

The last any of them, sworn to Lannisters or Tarlys, had seen of Jaime, he was charging a dragon on a white horse. If they’ve spun warm stories around their young lord it’s nothing to what they’ve spoken into existence around Jaime Lannister. He’d talked with them, briefly, before the long night and listened to them. Brienne can see them unfolding under her attention. When Sansa dismisses them, solemn and earnest in her praise and thanks, the men bow deeply to her, grateful. 

Next come reports on how the people are taking the news of the rationing while Brienne corrals Lord Royce of the Vale from the stables. He reports that the Tarly and Lannister men have mostly integrated into his camp in the aftermath of the battle, largely without protest from the Dothraki, news that pleases Sansa inordinately, considering how small a number they make up.

Sansa shows Royce fresh news from the Riverlands, none of the messages offering a word on her missing Tully uncle. Arya arrives and sits stone-faced next to Sansa throughout. 

“What if I killed him?” she says after Royce is gone. She glances back at Brienne who is standing still, at one of her preferred posts, by the door. “What if he really was still with the Freys and I killed him without knowing?” 

Brienne’s heart aches for them. She’d sent her letter searching for family connection buoyed up on the unexpected gift of life all around her. No one's life and no one's happiness but her own is impacted by the silence. 

Sansa says, “We’ll ask Jaime Lannister about our uncle’s child by the Frey girl, although if no one in the Riverlands knows where the girl has gone, I doubt he does. If she’s not dead then perhaps she was sensible enough to run, in which case, all our mother’s family is gone and the Riverlands are Bran’s if they’re anyone's.”

Arya snorts, “Bran doesn’t even want Winterfell. You can’t be expected to manage the Vale, the Riverlands, and the North.” 

“The Vale doesn’t need managing. I trust Lord Royce completely,” says Sansa, with a smile, “and I don’t want the Riverlands, I want someone palatable sitting between us and whoever is in the Red Keep. Bran will choose someone for Riverrun wisely, I’m quite sure, once we win the war or we work out how we would defend a claim to the North.” 

“Oh, I’m sure Bran will be so invested in that decision,” says Arya, “perhaps you’ll be able to help him? Do you think?” She peers over the desk to look at the scroll Sansa is scratching at. 

Sansa snatches the paper away from Arya and says, “Arya, I want to talk to you about Gendry the blacksmith, newly of House Baratheon.”

Arya sits back in her chair and crosses her arms. 

“Brienne, would you mind waiting outside?” she says.

Brienne goes to stand on the other side of the door. She thinks about Jaime saying, _You’re not a household knight._ Back at Evenfall she would sit by her father’s side while the people of the island filed in to make their complaints and reports, learning by watching. They hadn’t had a sworn knight to stand beside them but they had never needed one, both of them could fight, although her father never relished it, and Tarth had always been quiet, even during her childhood memories of the last war. There had been boundary creep in the salt pits, nets stollen from fishermen, the occasional broken betrothal - other than her own - and compensation for men injured mining marble. 

She supposes that she could think of Gendry Baratheon as a herd of goats multiple people wished to claim, but goats didn’t need to have their opinions and emotions managed and they didn’t possess the ability to wield hammers. Perhaps, Brienne considers, Arya will marry Gendry and be Lady of the Stormlands. Arya would be responsible for the safety of Tarth’s people. This is comforting. She particularly likes the thought of Arya as an honoured guest in the wood and marble halls at Evenfall. The trouble is that she can’t see how Gendry makes up a particularly valuable herd of goats. The Stormlands are cut off from them by the Westerlands, which Tyrion had taken and abandoned, and the Reach, which Jaime had nominally taken for Cersei and also abandoned. She had thought she was ill-equipped for governance because she could not marry, but perhaps she is unsuited because she would never have been able to protect her people in negotiations like these. Even if she could claim Tarth as her own, it is too small and distant to give her any right to interfere in all this haggling.

It is rather dull to stand guard by a door in a friendly castle, although it feels ungrateful to think it. What would all those dead men have given for some boredom? It gives her too much time to think and watch the soft morning light shift into cold midday starkness. Aching tiredness is creeping back into her bones, her shoulders painful when she leans against the wall. She pulls her cloak more tightly around herself. They had said it would be today. This is no weather for standing around. 

She puts her hand on the jewelled pommel of her sword and thinks about Jaime, not as the man she saw finger combing his hair back into order this morning, but as a political piece. His survival then becomes about use: service. He has a better, and realistically, a more popular claim to the Westerlands than Tyrion. If Daenerys’s claim to the throne is by birthright, it makes sense to be seen to adhere to that principle elsewhere. He claims that he’s useless as a hostage but he hasn’t said it to anyone significant yet. Perhaps he will not repeat it. He can not be trusted in military action against the south while his sister lives, but he is a recognisable figure to the southern forces - the Kingslayer carries a certain mythos with him - and they need to be prepared for victory. He is one of the few people available to them with intimate knowledge of the court and military commands of the last five failed rulers of Westeros. 

She could argue away any of these reasons and she’s sure Jaime would have dismissed them all last night: the queen has Tyrion and Varys. But surely it would be such a waste to burn him. Cold blooded. A waste of any person. It’s about risk; it's a matter of working out what to safely do with him instead. 

Jon Snow and Samwell Tarly arrive and leave her standing outside the door again. Brienne feels a brief flare of hope when they clatter into the corridor, but Tarly rushes quickly past her without mention of any letters from Tarth. There are raised voices. Brienne wonders if the Tarly who is not a maester knows about his family, or if Sansa will have to be the one to break it to him. Someone else should do it and let Sansa rest. She tries to imagine herself having to tell a man that his brother and father are dead.

She sits with Sansa and they eat food brought for them from the kitchens. Sansa eats quickly, glaring into the fire. Brienne tries to match her pace despite her tight stomach. 

She stops only to say, “Lord Tyrion mentioned to us that the spymaster Varys has become disaffected with the Queen. He said he was whispering treason. Or something very like that,” she can’t remember his exact words. The moment is too flush with hurt. It feels essential, but grubby nonetheless to pass the information onwards. Sansa looks up with sudden blazing interest. 

“He was drunk and scared for his brother,” Brienne says, “I don’t think he meant to say it, but I’m not sure.” 

Sansa purses her lips.

“If he meant for me to know it’s a risk not to have told me more directly,” she says. She pauses a moment longer and then goes back to her food. “Thank you, Brienne.”

She’s poised and regal again as they ride out through the gates of the castle with Jon Snow. Winter’s Town is ramshackle, over-crowded and enveloped by the bustling camps set up by the men who can’t or won’t fit comfortably within Winterfell’s walls. The rows of tents are packed tight into garrisons which were dismantled and then rebuilt over the debris of the fighting. The northern children are just as grubby as before the battle. Few people out here seem to have ever had access to Winterfell’s hot springs. Pockets of neatly but lightly dressed dark skinned men are pressed silently around the fires, swallowed up by shouting war preparations and roving groups of dead eyed men. 

Brienne has a clean room with a fireplace and a large bed she has only shared with two others by her choice. Brienne has bathed three times in the hot springs since the battle. She had a raven to send to her father for no other reason than she wanted to send it. At the edge of the town the Dothraki tents begin. Before the battle they continued out beyond where the hills bent away from her sight. Now they are a sea turned into a mildly impressive lake. 

“They must be so cold,” says Sansa. 

Everyone stands quietly aside as she and Jon and all their retinue pass by. The further they get from the sheltering walls of Winterfell and the town, the more the icy wind cuts into Brienne’s skin. Jon’s wolf prowls slowly around their party and Brienne shifts her horse a little closer to Sansa's. 

“These tents weren’t made for northern winters,” Sansa says, running a fiercely practical eye over the landscape. Jon’s face falls into further washed out exhaustion and the wolf circles to stand beside him, as though it also feels the need to survey their troops. 

“I know,” he says. “The queen is dealing with it.” 

Sansa reaches for his arm. His horse shifts under him. 

“I know she comes out here to walk among them but that can’t be enough to satisfy them. We should extend our hospitality and invite their leaders into the great hall.” 

Jon Snow’s face is lined with tension. “Is it your hospitality to extend?” he says, then, “We can try.”

***

She doesn’t get to collect Jaime. Two Night’s Watch in their black furs are waiting awkwardly next to him where he has reclined himself in a chair in Sansa’s study in an almost convincing affect of disinterest. He looks for a moment to be conflicted about standing as their cold little party files into the room. Brienne widens her eyes and jerks her head at him. He gives her a small, tight look and drags himself mulishly to his feet as the Night’s Watch shuffle out of the room.

Jon slaps the men’s shoulders as they leave, ignoring Jaime entirely, and sighs deeply. 

“It still doesn’t feel right to do this without at least some of the northern lords present,” he says.

“Jon, we agreed. Later,” says Sansa confidently, and she turns to Brienne. 

Brienne knows what’s coming by the flash of sympathy she sees on Sansa’s face. 

“Brienne, would you mind waiting outside?” 

She makes sure to meet Jaime’s eyes before she retreats into the corridor, dutifully taking up her place by the door. 

The queen and her retinue arrive shortly afterwards. They’re walking quickly and purposefully. Brienne experiences a moment where she exists slightly outside of herself and her body almost decides to step in front of the door. 

From behind the Queen she hears Tyrion saying, “And if there was anyone left in the world who Cersei would bargain for, it would be him.” Daenerys stops sharply by Brienne and looks back at him. He’s completely calm. He’s a good liar.

“I have neither the time nor the inclination to drag him out for a proper trial. Your advice has been invaluable to me. I don’t forget that,” the queen says. 

Tyrion’s calm facade cracks. The queen looks Brienne up and down and speaks quickly to the unsullied man following them in his language. Then she nods to Varys, who looks as apprehensive as he always does. 

She smooths her hands over the sides of her well-tailored furs. Brienne feels twice as large as she typically does. “Let’s get this over with,” Daenerys says, and she pushes the door open. The unsullied man takes up a post on the other side of the door to Brienne as Varys, Tyrion and Ser Davos step after their queen and firmly shut the heavy door behind them. 

They stand silently, together. Brienne feels ridiculous in her enormous, swallowing cloak, next to his simple military leathers, although the corridor is cold. At least it disguises her unnecessary sword. The man has no weapon that she can see. 

The murmuring of dampened voices in the room is punctuated by the queen’s recognisable tone. Brienne struggles to hear without putting an ear to the door like a nosy servant. 

“You fought against the dead?” asks the man besides her, either accent or intent making it barely a question.

Brienne refocuses her attention, surprised. Few of the northern men speak to her, even after all this time, and she has never seen one of the unsullied initiate conversation beyond their ranks. 

“Yes,” she says, and he nods to her, satisfied. 

“You fought with us?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says, with a small smile. 

“Thank you,” Brienne tells him, and he inclines his head towards her. She says, thinking of Sansa and her audience with the southern men, “You must have come such a long way from home.”

“No,” he says, with no rancour. He has a friendly face, she notices, settled into seriousness.

Inside the room, she can suddenly hear Jaime’s voice. She strains and strains to understand. She thinks she recognises Tyrion’s voice interrupting him, but Jaime is talking. She prays, silently, as she hasn’t since the battle began.

“Will you fight with us in the coming war?” the man asks her. 

“I’m sworn to serve Lady Sansa,” says Brienne and she receives no response to that. She supposes that it really wasn’t any answer at all. She’s embarrassed to admit to him that her fighting is done. Sansa isn’t going to war. Tarth isn’t going to war. She is going to stay safe in this castle while this man marches away into the south, towards her home. 

Behind the door there are women’s voices, Daenerys and Sansa passing the conversation back and forth, deceptively pleasant and rendered almost undetectably quiet by the thick stone walls. Then, abruptly Tyrion’s voice again. She can’t stand here like a lead-footed guard. She starts walking, pacing the corridor. The unsullied man tracks her with minimal interest. It doesn’t seem possible, what the men say; that he’s half a man, good only for killing, but he followed his queen to a new continent without leaving any responsibility or feeling of home behind him. 

She says to him, “Do you love your queen?”

He seems slightly affronted by her question, his serious face growing more serious still. 

“Yes,” he says.

“More than any other person,” she prompts.

He seems to consider this. 

“More than any other duty.”

“Will you stay with your queen after the war?” she asks. 

“You have many questions,” he says.

Brienne is embarrassed. He was the one who spoke to her. 

Still, she says, “I apologise. I did not mean to be rude.” 

She has grown so used to talking to Podrick. She wants to talk to Podrick. 

He says, “We fought together, all of us, but you westerosi are still strangers.”

“Perhaps that’s because we do not talk to each other,” says Brienne, and then she has to apologise again. The silence in the corridor is stony.

“Perhaps I will ask you questions now,” the man says, “so that we can know each other better.” 

His face is no longer friendly. 

“I already apologised,” says Brienne. This is why she doesn't speak to people. She remembers now. She can hear raised voices now. 

“Do you love your lady wolf? Or do you love yourself and that man in there. People spit on the ground when he walks by.”

Brienne paces. People don’t spit at Jaime when she is with him. 

“He fought in the battle too.” The man deigns to tip his head in acknowledgement. “I killed a king,” she says and she finds herself standing in front of the door. Looking pointlessly at the handle. She’s not going to do anything more. There is nothing more she could do. She knows herself. 

The man is looking at her with renewed interest and he slides sinuously sideways to bar the door from her. 

“They don’t spit at you.”

“He wasn’t my king,” says Brienne, “I didn’t break my vows to do it.” 

She’d made sure of that when she swore her oath to Lady Catelyn; vengeance for Renly came above all other duties. She’d asked for no such exemptions when she committed herself to Sansa. 

“You killed him in battle? You are a great warrior to have become a household guard,” he says, head tipped back to meet her eyes. “Take up your position before they come back out,” he says. He’s easily a head shorter than her and she has her sword at her hip. 

“I’m not a household knight. I don’t have a post.” 

She hopes he does not move out of her way. She’s not going in there and she will be embarrassed to retreat now.

“When I killed my master, he still had a whip in his hand. I shoved my spear through his back. It was the day Daenerys Stormborn set me free.” 

He’s incandescent with echoed pride. He’s chosen to save all of them with his freedom. Brienne cannot let him think this of her. 

“I took that king’s head when he was already dying by someone else’s hand,” she confesses and then cannot stop. “It was the day I entered my lady’s service. I abandoned her when she needed me most to search for him.”

“You hated him?” he asks, “It wasn’t an order?”

“It was justice,” she says into the quiet and his dark, considering eyes. 

She’d decided it was justice. They’re all deciding in that room. There is still a remembered horror in that grey ghost, even after everything she has seen. It’s as much the moments after it had gone that haunts her. Renly’s still body, that old sword in her hand and the men she had killed with it. She’d screamed, she thinks, Lady Catelyn's face was wild enough that she thinks she must have screamed. 

When she’d found him, Stannis had called his death her duty. It was a duty she thinks she might have gathered a feeling of fierce triumph over, but then Podrick had been calling to her and they’d been running for their horses as the Bolton dogs howled. It had so nearly been a mistake. She thanks the gods she doesn’t have to regret that. She could write home without any shame at all.

Brienne retreats backwards to lean against the opposite wall. He carefully unfocuses his eyes just past her shoulder. It's impressively, passively rude. She wonders who it is, that he loves differently from his duty. She wishes that was the kind of thing you could ask people when it wasn't so obvious that strangers could read it from you, apparently at first sight. She hopes that he can find a way to keep that person safe. She should ask his name. Sansa would have begun there. Her father would never have remembered.

***

The door opens to reveal Daenerys Stormborn, white-faced and with her mouth set. The unsullied man steps smartly out of her way, and Brienne is left staring straight into her strange, sad eyes. She has dark bruising under them, just like Sansa. Everyone in this whole castle is exhausted. The stones are leaching from them.

“Your grace,” says Tyrion plaintively from inside the room. 

“I have no more time for this. These are the conditions of my mercy. They will be met,” she wrenches the door the rest of the way open and sails from the room, her small hands are balled into fists. 

The unsullied man falls smartly in next to the bearded old Ser Davos and Varys glides along behind, looking just as pleased as he did when he entered. 

Jon Snow emerges next and nods to Brienne, turning to head after the queen. Through the doorway she meets Jaime’s eyes as he is sinking back down into one of the chairs. The sudden absence of constriction around her chest leaves her queasy. She breathes out. She breathes in, breaking the surface of the water. She’d known that they would see that he should live. She’d only allowed herself to be scared by Tyrion and Jaime and their Lannister theatrics. 

“I do apologise if any plans of yours depended on me being useful to you in the Westerlands,” says Jaime to Sansa. 

Sansa flicks her eyes over him and says to Brienne, who finds that she has barged into the room, “You can take him away.” 

Jaime stands and bows his head to her and then, to her surprise, to Tyrion.

“My lord brother,” he says. 

Tyrion grimaces. “You’re alive. You’re welcome,” he says. 

He’s pulling at the leather on the chest of his jacket. The iron symbol marking his office as Hand to the queen is gone. The material is distorted where he had pushed the pin through. Jaime reaches out to shake his shoulder, very gently. Brienne looks to Sansa who is standing statue still except for her hands which she is holding balled in front of her, fidgeting impatiently. 

“Do you need anything else today, my lady?”

“No,” says Sansa, “Lord Tyrion, will you please stay with me.” 

Tyrion glances anxiously between Sansa and Jaime, “It’s ‘Tyrion’, please,” he says, “nothing is quite that settled yet.” 

“Clearly, it was all decided,” says Sansa, “Everyone else: out.” 

Brienne wants to ask her what went wrong, what went right, why she’s upset. Brienne gives in and grabs Jaime to tow him from the room. She hasn’t actually touched him like this since the Riverlands and then she had despised him. It’s all tumbled up, shoving him along with her hands on his shoulders and the desperate joy at what sounds like mercy. In the corridor he twists in her grip and she barely remembers to let him go. They have to keep moving. 

“I need to tell you-” he says. 

He fumbles to grasp her hands and she clutches him back. Her palms are broader than his, his fingers longer. She's still walking him backwards down the corridor, staring down at the messy tangle of their gloves. 

He gathers up her hands and presses them to his lips, his eyebrows drawn. She can’t feel anything but light pressure through leather, except the strange solidity of his right hand in hers. He tugs at her again, turning her hands and pressing his lips to the exposed skin at her wrist. His beard is rough. The point of his nose is cold, but his breath against her skin is quick and warm. What would that feel like against her mouth? She watches, fascinated, as he turns his face up to her. She has stopped walking. She wonders if he’ll do it. They should speak first. And not in veiled language and half promises. 

“You look… unhappy,” he says straightening, his eyes searching her face.

“I do not,” says Brienne, automatically contrarian. She can’t look away from his mouth. 

She reads the potential movement in the same way she anticipates a swordsman’s lunge. He smiles at her fiercely. He pushes up onto his toes to kiss her. She needs to speak to him.

She grabs his arm and sidesteps him, starting to walk again. He’s heavy against her hands. Now it’s really is like trying to drag him across the Riverlands. Here she is trying to follow instructions and do him good and here he is resisting her. When she glances at him, face burning, he’s staring at her, eyes wide and jaw set. 

“I’m taking you back to my room. We can talk about this,” she says. 

He plants his feet entirely and says her name, his voice strained. She’s trying to drag him now. Tyrion is almost certainly about to be thrown out by Sansa and then he’ll look at them and know and say something awful. She just wants to put Jaime away somewhere safe where he can’t un-do whatever reprieve he was just given. 

“While normally, of course, I’d be thrilled to be dragged off and ravished by-.” 

She drops his arm abruptly and whirls to face him.

“Why would you say that? Can you allow me a few moments to be glad that you’re alive before you ruin it by speaking.” 

He rubs at his arm. 

He says, very softly, “You really need to hear what they decided to do with me. Brienne, I had no right.” 

She doesn’t want him to apologise for the almost kiss. She doesn’t want him to regret it.

“Let’s discuss it,” she says - he nods - “somewhere else.” 

“You should know I’ve been stripped of my titles and lands,” he says, “denounced and attainted. My name too, but that’s mostly a farce. I’ll be Jaime Lannister, Kingslayer until I die and there’s little anyone can do about that.”

He looks so sorry. She becomes aware that she has clenched her hands into fists and drawn herself up to her full height. 

“Jaime,” she says, horrified, the reality of it colliding painfully with the strange turning knot of feeling she's been worrying at over Tarth and all it means to her. Her father would never have tried to marry her to someone who wasn't even a knight. She has been oscillating uncomfortably between certainty that Tarth is gone from her and hope that she has stumbled upon a way to return. 

“Yes,” he says, “precisely.” 

He mostly looks concerned for her. It’s ridiculous for her to be upset by this, she thinks. She hadn’t written about him in her letter to her father, she hadn’t made any decisions nor had any assurances from him, but still, she can’t master her reaction. 

“There was no accompanying death sentence,” she reassures herself and as he shakes his head she begins to consider. 

It’s possible she lost Tarth a long time ago. She has a Valyrian sword and an extremely dubious knighthood that no one seems to have worked up the energy to object to. She fought an army of corpses and is subject to a queen who rides dragons. Highborn ladies have married commoners before, although they have been ridiculed and ostracised for it. Like he says, it’s not like anyone won’t know who he is. She is used to scorn and she can ignore those who think her disgraced, so long as she knows it isn't true. This part is easy.

“You’re being very dramatic,” she says. 

This time when she grabs for him he comes easily.

***

“Jaime,” she begins, pulling herself to attention.

“Ser Brienne,” he cuts in. She blinks at him. She doesn’t think he’s actually used the title to address her directly, having given it to her. “Are you certain that you should give me this, that they will let you give me this?”

“I will do what I like.”

“Lord of Tarth.” he says, “That is what you’re going to suggest. Brienne. It seems very unlikely they would let me be lord of anything.” 

Brienne flushes at the directness and is annoyed by her reaction. This was her idea. 

“The land and the title might be gone,” she reminds him and herself. Tarth’s silence might really mean that her father has dredged up some very distant relative and disinherited her. He could be trying to muster the fortitude to reply, firmly telling her to leave them all alone. “But it was my father’s and it would be mine,” she says, deciding. People do that with titles. Everyone would surely agree to it, because who among them will care what goes on in Tarth. It would be so tidy; he would be swept away off the mainland, far away from his brother and anyone from the Westerlands who might think to look to him. Her father had begrudgingly dragged himself to court as little as he could manage and it had never mattered. Jaime can simply not go, if the queen does not want to see him. Brienne would also prefer not to go.

“So disreputable I’ve become Dornish,” he says. “I would expect no less.”

“For all we know, the Dornish are doing rather better than any of us.” she says, “Look at me.”

She does not know why she thought she would be more prepared for his eyes on her now. Having demanded it, she has to meet his stare. He might not want to, of course. He might not want her, or at least, he might not want her quite like that, not to live with in the dirty day to day where she will inevitably be revealed not to be the incorruptibly deceased Arthur Dayne. Moreover, Lannisters are snobs, that was a fact, she was not so much an infatuated fool that she did not know that. Obstinately peaceful Tarth has so few inhabitants that they had not raised men to fight for Renly. Perhaps Ser Jaime Lannister would even prefer to become simply Jaime - surely Tyrion would give him whatever he wanted to live despite their disagreement - rather than become Of Tarth and spend his life deferring to a giant woman. She feels, for the first time, a familiar creeping flush of humiliation. It’s too much to look at him, anymore. She’s revealed herself so utterly and plainly.

“So I would be,” - she looks up at him, hoping - “here in Winterfell, married to a household knight. Or, Jaime of Tarth,” he tries it, carefully. “Gods.”

“Yes, that is what I am asking you.”

“It’s not a question.” he says, soft and frustrated, “Brienne, it’s a gift.”

She fists her hands at her sides so as not to twist them together. 

“I’ll ask them then,” she announces, her voice very loud in the quiet room with the fire all burned away.

“Don’t promise the dragon queen anything,” he says, “Not a thing. Not in exchange for me.”

“I’ll ask Sansa. It seems like the queen doesn’t want anything, except to be rid of you,” she says, aiming for brusqueness. The queen doesn’t need to bargain. 

He reaches for her hand again, this time leaving his right stiffly by his side. 

“I would be thrilled to be so insulted,” he says.

She thinks perhaps that isn’t entirely true. 

He walks backwards, not letting go of her hand until his knees hit the bed. Then he collapses, taking her awkwardly with him. It jars pain back into her bruised shoulders and she ends up perched next to his sprawled body, trying to manoeuvre her sword and caught up in her own cloak. Last time they’d been so close and still they’d both stunk of piss and sweat and the stranger had been gnawing on Jaime’s arm. 

“You would consent to kiss me, then?” he asks with levity that isn’t reflected in his eyes, as though she is some coy lady of the court, holding him back. She tries to give him a black look, but can’t quite pull it off. He passes a hand over his eyes. “When will you ask?” 

Brienne feels that it might be diplomatic to leave them all in peace concerning Jaime, at least for a little while. Just because her war is effectively over doesn’t mean anyone else has time for her wants and wishes.

“I don’t know,” she says truthfully and then she lies back next to him and closes her eyes. 

She sinks into blessed, selfish relief. He’s alive. He’ll stay alive. She can be the one to make sure of it. It will be her responsibility. She reaches out to take hold of his wrist again, but he curls his hand to meet hers instead. He’ll stay hers even if she intends to spend her whole life standing outside of doors so that Sansa Stark can better care for the North and all its people. Besides her Jaime shifts. 

“You do know that you don’t have to marry me to fuck me?” Jaime says, “The gods won’t strike you down.” 

She is keenly aware of the heat that had barely left her face. This isn’t some seven inspired piosity. Everyone says the Lord of Light set fire to the trenches, Brandon Stark claims to be an avatar for some ancient knowledge and Jon Snow is a dead man who did not dissipate into nothing with the rest. Brienne doesn’t think the gods care about her bedroom arrangements. She thinks other men and women care. Sin sticks. Virtue is more slippery. It would never have taken much more than a misstep. _Maid_ is a fragile honour not bound to the truth, but she has a good arm, a Valyrian steel sword and Sansa Stark. There is very little in the world that she has to do.

“I know that.” 

She rolls herself and props herself up on the bed above him. He looks up at her, his eyebrows pinched, somewhere adjacent to amused curiosity.

“I know I don’t have to marry you,” she says reassuringly.

This time when he shoves himself up towards her she doesn’t move away. He pauses, breath soft against her, just like it had been on her wrist. She inhales shakily and closes her eyes against the heat smeared blur of him, so close to her face. Then he puts his mouth almost delicately to hers. Closes against her top lip and nudges into her. His beard isn’t as soft against her as his hair is in her hand. She’s drowning in hot air. She pushes back into him and he meets her. Tries to guide her jaw with his cold fingers pressing back into the bone. She catches a ragged nail in his hair and only grips at him tighter: a pinprick pain against the blossoming pleasure of having the warm expanse of his chest pressing back against hers. Her heart is beating in her mouth. She can’t get close enough without hurting them both. 

She pulls away to push her face into his neck instead. He runs his fingers over the shell of her ear and she shudders. It’s something she had never considered. She’s prickling with sweat. Reluctantly she pulls her hand from his hair. She pushes herself away from his heat to stand and pull off her cloak. 

When she turns back, Jaime is propped up on one elbow, watching her wide-eyed. He’s clutching at the fastening of his shirt and the band of his cloak like a maid holding the neck of her dress. The clench of his jaw looks half frustration, half terror. 

“We’re not going to,” says Brienne, hurt, “I’m just hot.” 

Jaime pouts like a performer in a lousy street theatre troupe, but it takes him a few moments to let go of the white knuckle grip at his neck. 

“Well,” he says, “there’s no particular hurry that I’m aware of. We have informally been promised to each other for the space of two whole breaths.” 

Brienne dumps her cloak and pulls off her boots. She hesitates. Technically it’s her bed. He reaches for her, so she lies back down next to him, staring up at the ceiling. He’d tried to kiss her first, she reassures herself. It’s actively counter to the facts of the situation to believe she isn’t wanted, but she thinks about her rough hands and her broad shoulders and her ugly scars. She drags their conversation back through her mind, turning it over, uncertain. What will he do, if she stays here in Winterfell? Take up one handed sewing? Work the land when spring finally comes? What do wives of knights do, if their husband has no lands? He'd said it was a gift. After a moment Jaime stands to drop his own cloak. He collapses back down next to her, puts his hand over her wrist and rolls over to push a kiss to her clenched jaw. With his nose pressed into her shoulder and his chest rising and falling against her arm, Brienne lets her tension seep out into the mattress. 

“Tyrion isn’t going to turn up and start talking at you, is he?” she says. Jaime shrugs against her. “Are you angry with him?” 

She tries to imagine confronting whatever jumped up merchant or minor gentry her father might have been forced to pass Tarth onto. Maybe whoever it is now sits in Evenfall laughing at all the love she’d poured onto that little scrap of parchment. Maybe she knew whoever it was as a child. She hates the idea of it. She hopes whoever it is will at least find a way to work hard for their people. Jaime shakes his head against her: not angry. 

“It’s Tyrion who is angry with me.” 

She supposes that he loves and trusts Tyrion. At least Tyrion seems to want all that responsibility. 

“Lord Tyrion of Casterly Rock. Father will be back from the dead to murder us all,” he laughs quietly. “But doesn’t it sound perfect. Tyrion, son of Tywin, son of Tytos.” She lets herself push her hand back into his hair. “My mother named me. Father complained once it was a servants name - diminutive - but he loved her so much-.” The amusement bleeds out of his voice. Brienne pats at him. 

“You’d make a terrible servant,” she says. 

“Oh, really?” says Jaime, feigning insult, “I was a good squire and then I was competent at standing outside of tents and rooms, carrying messages, fetching armour occasionally.” He runs out of steam, or perhaps he is at a loss for what else it is servants might do. She has no idea where he has been staying or who has been looking after his things. The castle is so overrun that the household servants have no time for fires or cleaning private quarters. If Brienne is honest with herself, it’s mostly Podrick who has been remembering to fetch her fresh wood and water. Jaime continues in a drone, “Opening doors, closing doors. I was a poor jester but Robert did try his best for me.” He nudges his nose against her shoulder and tries more lightly, perhaps noticing his descent into bitterness, “I don’t know what’s expected of the average cook these days but it was all very diverting.” Something about this disturbs her. 

“You were Kingsguard, not a servant. It was a great honour to serve, you told Tyrion so yourself.” 

“So it’s an honoured kingsguard but not an honoured king’s cook. Poor cook,” he says. 

That wasn’t how she had meant that. An honoured servant taking out the King’s bedpan and sweeping out the fireplace? It was still service. Someone had to do all of it. She scowls at the ceiling. 

“What cook have you ever spoken to, to ask how they felt about it?” she says.

He waves that away with his finely gloved gold hand. 

“If I were a cook, I’d never have found a place after the first dead master. That would sensibly have been the end of it. I’m an ill luck omen now I think of it. Three of my last masters? Or, no!” he says triumphantly, pulling away and sitting up, “four!”

Two sons, she thinks. You wouldn’t know it to hear him, but you’d know it to look at him, smiling at the fire with too many teeth. Four dead and that may soon be five, if the preparations for Daenerys’s army leaving continue apace. Sansa worries and worries that the men are tired and depleted in number, but his sister will die. Brienne thinks there is no question of that. 

“Four. So far,” he says, slumping back down next to her. She turns to him, shocked, but he says, “The dragon queen wants me to swear to her before they enact my public humiliation. I wouldn’t want any allegiance from me if I were her.”

Brienne examines his glaring profile, “Why do you hate her? You can’t care this much about Randyll Tarly.” 

She finds the idea that he cares about any Tarly at all frankly incredible. He doesn’t seem to be able to answer that, lying silent and heavy by her side. 

“I don’t hate her,” he says, frustrated. 

“What did she do when you told her about the wildfire?” she asks. Jaime sighs and turns to her.

“She already knew her father was dangerous and cruel,” he says, “when I arrived it seemed as though she was entirely ignorant, as though no one had dared to tell her, but she knew.”

“So she wasn’t shocked? She knew it all?” asks Brienne, surprised. The queen hadn’t looked indifferent when she’d been stood with her back to him. Brienne had seen her eyes. There’s madness, and then there is releasing wildfire in a city of your own people. Sansa had relayed to her the increasingly loud whispers, that seem more and more like fact coming down from the south about his sister causing the terrible explosion in the Sept of Baelor. She cannot imagine the impact of what Aerys had planned. 

“Not about his final order. How could she have known?” he says, sounding as though it is wrenched from him, “I kept it from everyone.” Brienne waits. “It devastated her. I don’t think she wanted us to see it, but I know it did.” 

Brienne is comforted by that. Daenerys Targaryen cuts such an otherworldly figure with her dragon children. It is reassuringly human to be upset by the news that your father wanted to kill so many of his own people in such a terribly purposeless way. 

She turns into him to address the top of his hair, “It’s good you told her. She deserved to know.” 

He’s quiet for a long time. She lets herself float, halfway asleep. 

“I should be angry with her,” Jaime confesses softly into the cooling air. 

Brienne doesn’t respond. She doesn’t have to ask whether he means Daenerys or his sister. 

“I should have acted after the Sept, although I don’t know what, precisely I should have done. I just thought… maybe she wouldn’t have needed to do it if I’d been there?” 

Brienne finds that notion very stupid, but can’t bring herself to try and disabuse him of the harmless wish. He’s lying next to her, alive, safe and very nearly hers. 

They nearly sleep through dinner. Pod wakes them, shaking her carefully and averting his eyes from where Jaime is pressed into her shoulder.

***

Huddled around the fire after more standing in the corridor, eating her morning meal with Sansa, Brienne gathers up the courage for a request. She’d slept next to Pod and Jaime again, and she hadn’t offered any particular excuse. She feels clearer headed for it.

Prior to the battle, she had been responsible for her assigned men and she had been helping Sansa. The days had blinked away so quickly, overshadowed by the wave of death sweeping towards them. This morning has elongated strangely, without the sickening dread of yesterday’s hanging axe. She wants to feel that she has done something.

“My lady, could I talk to you about Podrick Payne?”

Sansa places her empty plate on the floor and turns to her, folding her hands neatly in her lap. Sansa and Podrick had grown to know each other a little by necessity on the painful journey from Winterfell to Castle Black. 

“Certainly,” Sansa says, and waits, attentive. 

Sansa has a new fur. It’s a grey pelt, the unaltered shape of a giant wolf, slung over the top of her cloak. There are marbles in it’s eyes and it’s clawed feet embrace her, curled across her chest. It clearly means a lot to Sansa, because she keeps touching it with careful affection. Brienne has spent the morning trying not to make eye contact with it. She looks steadily at Sansa now. 

“Does the queen plan to dispense any honours to those who fought in the battle? Podrick has long been my squire in all but name, and he fought bravely that night. He would make an excellent knight, I’m sure anyone would agree.”

Sansa tilts her head. “I don’t know, Brienne. I can find out. Put his name forward.”

“Thank you, my lady,” says Brienne, and Sansa gifts her with a warm smile. 

Brienne finishes the last of her food, and Sansa hands her the empty plate to stack. Brienne will take them away. She hasn’t been useful for much else so far today. There was an exciting interlude when she took a note out to the gate house for collection by someone from the town.

“We’ll have more people available to help with tasks like this when the queen’s forces move out,” says Sansa, apologetically. Brienne doesn’t mind fetching and carrying. She’s happy for another chance to stretch her legs and she’s intimately aware of how much work is going into managing the day to day running of the castle. She’s been there, quite superfluous, next to the poor, overrun steward, through many of Sansa’s meetings with head washerwomen, bakers, candlemakers and clothiers. She and her father had overseen this work together, but their steward had been able to continue largely unsupervised. Tens of thousands had never descended on Evenfall and they had never had to recover from breached defences. It has been enlighteningly complicated. 

“I’m happy to help in anyway I can, my lady.” She gathers the plates in her lap, waiting to be dismissed.

“You’ve never asked me for anything for yourself,” says Sansa. “I want Winterfell to be your home. I want you to know you can come to me with anything you need.”

Brienne clutches at the the plates and looks cautiously at Sansa’s unusually open face. She’d meant to delay asking, but she won’t find a better moment. This is as selfish a request as she will ever need to make. 

“My lady, I’d like to ask you about Jaime.”

“What now?” says Sansa, “That’s all decided.” She sounds as though she’s pretending to feel neutral about it. 

“I want to marry him,” Brienne says. Sansa is, very briefly, a little slack-jawed. Then she settles her face and looks down at her hands, considering. Brienne stays very still. She’d thought it had been obvious. 

“Has Tyrion promised you a handsome dowry?” Brienne is well practiced at waiting out remarks that deserve no response. Sansa doesn’t fold into self-flagellating contrition, but Sansa also says aloud, “Sorry,” quickly and quietly.“I have always thought of you as a very sensible woman.” 

It’s strange to spend all your time observing one person, monitoring their wants and to not be known in return. Brienne dressed herself in her armour, told her father that she could never give Tarth an heir, and set off as the lone representative from her island to die making a third son King. All because he would have been a great ruler, and because he was kind to her when they were children. She is quite sure that she is not a _excessively_ sensible person.

“I have considered this. Carefully, my lady.”

“You will need to write to your father.”

“I wrote to Tarth,” says Brienne - Sansa jerks her head up - “not about this. I’ve had nothing in response.” 

“I’m sorry,” Sansa says, “We’ve heard nothing, even unofficially, from anyone in the Stormlands since the queen arrived.“

Brienne sits, stewing on this. How could no one have thought to tell her? She supposes that lack of word could just be an coordinated political position, but that seems uncharacteristically harmonious. For the first time, she worries truly that there is something more than one man’s death or censure at the other end of Tarth’s silence. They technically have the Stormlands here in Gendry Baratheon, but in the cold light of winter, that is entirely useless. He has no army and no one who owes him allegiance except Brienne. 

Sansa says, quietly, voice kicking up a little at the end, “You feel you might go back?” She frowns and thins her lips. 

Brienne shifts uncomfortably. 

“Have their new lord write to them,” suggests Brienne, “and the name might shake them into some response.”

“Arya says he’s illiterate,” says Sansa sharply, “and I only have so many waking hours and so many ravens to lose. I won’t be responsible for misplaying his hand for him. The queen made him; she should deal with him.” 

Brienne struggles not to raise her eyebrows. 

“He’s completely illiterate?” Brienne asks, focusing on the practical issue. She does not think Arya would ever be so cruel as to invent that. The storm lords won’t like it. Her father would have been kind about it, but it would have disturbed him. Sansa sighs. “He’s my responsibility too,” decides Brienne, “would you mind if I tried speaking to him about it, my lady? I know those houses. I could tell him what to write.”

“Could you?” says Sansa, alight with relief, “although - could you tell him that you come with my permission specifically.”

Brienne sits back to look at her. She would prefer not to be a piece in some power struggle between Sansa and the queen. 

“My lady,” she says, very gently, “She will be gone soon. She’ll take all her armies and dragons and-.”

“Jon looks at me like that,” Sansa interrupts, “This isn’t some petty competition between women. I’ve worked with her. I’m not Cersei Lannister, no matter what your Jaime says.”

Brienne recoils, stung. She doesn’t want ownership of Jaime’s calculated unpleasantness. 

“You shouldn’t be hurt by that. He said it to be cruel.” 

Sansa rolls straight over her.

“His words didn’t hurt me because they are not true. Our men are tired and hurt. We need the northern men she’s taking for repairs, hunting, protection, to make long overdue preparations for a winter that’s already here. I know Cersei better than anyone in this castle and she’s not worth their lives. We have no clear grasp of the chaos out there. Likely as not by the time winter begins to turn we’ll find she’s been murdered by her own people.” 

Brienne also thinks that extremely likely. Perhaps Jaime did confirm who destroyed the sept. 

“Your brother and the queen must have their logic,” says Brienne peaceably. 

“They have one very compelling reason; we can’t feed her men. We’ve been talking to the wildlings, but we’re too far from the ocean and we don’t have enough food stored away.”

“She could sail back to Essos and regroup,” says Brienne.

Sansa says emphatically, “Yes. Thank you. She could.”

“But she did come here to help us,” says Brienne. She can’t help but feel for the queen. She’d had no real reason to leave Jaime alive and Brienne is grateful. Now her fear is abating she can’t help but find something wondrous in the woman who flies on the back of mythical beasts. 

“As I have said repeatedly to Jon, my gratitude does not give me the ability to reshape reality. I explain everything to her and she only hears that she must go forward, faster. She’ll drag our people south and everything I say only hastens their going.”

Brienne’s request feels stupid and small. She’s been thinking of this as a strange moment of peace. All her people are finally safe and within reach. She’s been looking at a selfishly tight little group, just Sansa, Arya, Podrick and Jaime. Sansa owes her service to a far greater number of people. So does Brienne, when she’s honest with herself.

“I do understand her,” says Sansa, more kindly. “They are already her people, in her heart. She wants to be with them. What’s terrible is that we’re her people too and that’s why she won’t stay depleting our food stores for a moment longer than she has to.”

“But she won’t retreat,” says Brienne.

“Someone who would retreat now would never have come to save us. She can’t be cautious now she’s come so far and lost so much.” 

Brienne can respect that. 

“The wildlings really say we can’t survive?”

“We can’t support so many people and we need trade access to the south, but people lived through long winters here in the past. We can do it again if we can access the right knowledge.” Brienne is warmed by her confidence. She nods her head supportively. “Also, we need to call them, free folk. I keep forgetting. If they stay for the whole winter, we’re all going to end up absorbing some quite extraordinary ideas.”

“I’ll keep Jaime away from them, he’s already halfway there,” says Brienne.

Sansa looks at her with deadly interest, “She doesn’t already have him as another devoted acolyte then? Even though she was so unexpectedly bountiful in her mercy? Tyrion couldn’t stop talking about it.”

Brienne attempts to stop the awkward sideways slide of her eyes. Sansa reads her easily.

“Alright,” she says, sitting back, “That was a little much, for someone avoiding comparisons to Cersei.” 

“You sound a little in love with her too,” says Brienne, _“They’re already in her heart. She came to save us,”_ Brienne repeats, feeling daring. Sansa raises her eyebrows at her, but she looks pleased. “My lady,” adds Brienne, and Sansa sighs and stands. 

“I need to get on,” she says. Brienne surges to her feet, holding the plates between them. “You needn’t come back today, I’d prefer you spend the time with Gendry Baratheon. Let me know how it goes sometime tomorrow morning.” 

‘I will, my lady,” says Brienne, “If you’re sure you won’t need anything until then?”

“You have things to do,” says Sansa, which is generous. Brienne has two things to do, a dramatic increase from her previous single responsibility of training Podrick. 

“Let me send you Podrick Payne,” says Brienne, “He’s nearly a knight.”

***

Tracking down Podrick is a challenge. He’s not in her bedchamber and neither is Jaime. In the corner of her room there is a little collection of fancy leather packs. On top, carelessly untied, is a leather roll open to show a lavishly engraved razor handle and a little stone tied next to it. She looks closer. There is a hair on the blade. She had assumed his beard just looked like that by itself. Presumably there is a process. 

Podrick is also not in the kitchens or the guards’ hall. She finds him in the stable talking with a stable hand and lovingly brushing down one of the reliable but inelegant beasts they’d found after Pod had failed to hobble Jaime’s gifted horses on the way to the Eyrie. Podrick dotes on the creatures, possibly because neither of them has the intelligence or spirit to wander away if left untethered. 

“Ser Jaime’s here and I’m keeping an eye on everyone, please don’t worry, my lady,” says Pod. 

Brienne hadn’t been worried because she hadn’t known she needed to be. Sansa’s orders had clearly stated that Jaime should stay in the inner castle and remain accompanied. The stables are not the inner castle and Jaime is not in sight. 

“I’m here to find you, Pod,” she says, “You’re to help Lady Sansa for the rest of the day.” 

Podrick looks up at her doubtfully. 

“Am I going back to pouring wine?” he says, then hurries to clarify, “Not that pouring wine wasn’t a great honour.” 

“I have never poured wine for Lady Sansa,” says Brienne, “although I would have thought you’d be relieved to go back to it after that battle.” 

Podrick goes to hang his brush on the wall and rinse his hands in a pail of melting snow. He looks no more enthusiastic. Jaime should have knighted him after the battle. She hadn’t been thinking clearly about the future, caught up in currents of her cautious dance with Jaime and the thankful, weary, unexpected work of living. 

“We’ll still practice, although it will likely have to be after dark,” says Brienne. Podrick brightens, and Brienne leaves him to walk through the stables, looking for Jaime. She can’t keep him safe if he won’t obey her. 

She’s never seen him use the hand like this before. He’s using it to guide the top of the handle of the shovel as he scrapes it along the floor. She’d just assumed using it with any force would hurt him. She still remembers it as a fresh and terrible wound through which all his life and spirit was leaching. 

This is also the first she’s seen of the horse he’d brought with him. Podrick has been checking on their horses. Brienne has been spending too much time with Sansa to do the work herself. The horse is a magnificent palfrey, beautiful, with a shiny black coat and to look at the way it’s shifting its weight at her presence, it’s likely gifted with an enviably smooth amble. It’s not the fussy destrier she had expected at all; it’s an entirely appropriate horse to make an efficient journey on the scale of the one from King’s Landing to Winterfell, except for the fact that anyone looking at it would be able to see how much gold its rider was worth.

“How were you not robbed and left for dead on the road?” she asks. 

Jaime startles at her voice and then tries to cover it up, tossing dried horse shit out past her into the common area, filled with other people’s saddles and a few placid cart horses. Jaime had given her a sturdy chestnut courser when she rode out of King’s Landing. It had been Lannister money, clearly, but nothing like this. She can’t help but put a hand out to the horses elegant head.

“See, there are too many animals in here.” It is packed. He was right. 

“And you shouldn’t be here at all,” she says, brushing a hand down the horse’s neck. 

Jaime twitches a delighted smile at her.

“Are you calling me an animal?” he asks, sounding a little proud of her.

It hadn’t been deliberate. Brienne scowls at him to let him know how serious it is that she’s found him flouting Sansa’s rules. The horse curls its upper lip and she gets a flash of large teeth as it jerks it’s jaw. Brienne takes a healthy step backwards. 

“Brienne, I’ve been dealt with,” he says, un-contrite and casual, “Surely the quarantine was temporary.” 

“They haven’t made any announcement about you yet,” points out Brienne.

He comes to stand close, digging dried out peas from his belt and holding them up for the horse.

“If you think witnessing a little public humiliation is going to deter men from glaring at me, you’re sorely mistaken,” he says lowly, “They’re holding off on performing the whole spectacle precisely because they think it will be such a morale boost that someone will be inspired to start throwing rocks. Wouldn’t want to have that kind of bloodlust in the ranks before a long march.” 

Brienne will concede that seems very sensible.

“I’ve sent Podrick away. You can’t stay here alone. You need to do what you’re told and stay in the inner castle,” says Brienne. 

He screws his eyes closed as though his head hurts and pushes his forehead into the neck of the horse with a long slow exhale.

“I don’t want to just sit around,” he says. 

None of them wants to do that. There is nothing Brienne can do about it. 

“What’s his name?” Brienne asks.

“I don’t name horses,” he says, nonplussed, “do you?” 

Brienne can’t say that she ever has. She’s also never had a horse like this one. 

On their way out of the stables, Jaime hands off his shovel to a group of young, mousy haired northerners. All of them seem surprisingly pleased to see him. He’s just been painting a picture of the hostile, spitting masses. 

“‘Bye, ser,” chirps the boy who takes the shovel.

“Call me Jaime, there’s a good lad,” he says, suddenly charming in a way Brienne knows he’s entirely capable of but has rarely seen, at least not without him draping the gauzy performance over a thick undercurrent of mockery. The boy just looks confused.

“The informality will be less beguiling when they know it’s not your choice,” Brienne tells him, picking up her pace. He lengthens his stride to keep alongside her, glaring. 

“Getting them to trust me enough to let me alone with the horse turned out to be a lot of work,” says Jaime, “don’t undermine my achievements, such that they are. Wait, where are we going?”

Brienne has taken a sharp turn towards the smithy. Having Jaime along for this won’t help her gain Gendry’s trust, but she could use the moral support and the practical knowledge of someone raised to this vast kind of duty.

***

Gendry is shorter up close than Brienne had anticipated. Nevertheless, he has a kind face, and his hands are thick and dirty with hard work. There is something of Renly about his eyes. 

Jaime whispers to her, triumphant, “He looks nothing like Robert.” 

It is excessive to be that pleased about it. That king has been dead for years. 

They take Gendry back to Brienne’s quarters. Every communal space they try has been overrun by parties of men inexplicably in full mail who turn towards them with icy suspicion when they enter. With only the one chair available to them - it is galling to discover Tyrion might have been correct to advise her to find others - they sit by the fire on the rug. At least Gendry is not likely to be insulted by this arrangement.

It takes Brienne a long time to recount the many houses of the Stormlands in satisfactory detail, even tactfully eliding, for now, their many eccentricities. She had begun with the extinct houses; it was essential for proper context. Now she has progressed to those houses still operational, as far as she knows, who rightly owe him allegiance. 

She clears her throat before beginning on the more minor families. Besides her, Jaime puts his arm up on their one chair, puts his head on the arm and closes his eyes. Gendry, who is sat cross-legged and closest to the fire, turns slowly away from Brienne to blink at him, wearing the same dismayed and overwhelmed expression he’s been wearing since Brienne began her lecture with the pronouncement that the Stormlords were great military men with the ability to raise tens of thousands. She had made sure to clarify that Tarth was one of the exceptions to this rule. 

“My lady, could I have a moment,” Gendry says. 

Brienne stutters to a halt, realising that the man she is currently describing is surely dead with Stannis’s force and that it would be more useful to relate to Gendry the various foibles of his wife and daughters, about whom she knows very little. Her jaw aches again. Her father might know, he might not. Brienne turns to glare at Jaime who appears to be nodding off. He cracks an eye open blearily.

“Don’t stop on my account,” he says, “I know most of this from many tedious hours of childhood and that awful old man must surely be dead by now.” 

“You finish telling him then,” says Brienne, “if you know so much.” 

It’s her home. They’re her peers, even if they rarely acknowledged her as such. 

“We need something to draw the house sigils,” says Jaime, straightening, “it’s no good trying to remember them without seeing them.” This is, unfortunately, a perfectly passable idea. “Do you think you could explain as you write his letters to them? Context might help to fix them all in the mind.” 

She climbs roughly to her feet, annoyed with herself for not thinking of it. She can’t remember learning to read and write. She’d just… learned and then her handwriting had improved. She assumes it will be even easier for an adult to learn. They both stare up at her. 

“I’m going to get supplies. You can learn to read and write at the same time,” she tells Gendry, trying to sound encouraging. They both suddenly look even more worried, as though they think she expects him to immediately be able to write out something acceptable.

She slams out of the room without her cloak. In retrospect, attempting a soporific recounting of lineages that close to the comforting fire had been a mistake. She had only wanted to make the inevitable tedium somewhat comfortable for him. That Gendry had managed to maintain such a high and exhausting looking state of anxiety for that long, probably speaks very well of his commitment to his new responsibilities. 

She takes a detour via Sansa’s study and finds Podrick slumped against the wall outside. He straightens quickly when he spots her coming.

“She’s in there with Lady Arya again and you were right, she pours her own wine,” he says.

“Don’t inform on her to me,” says Brienne, but she pats his shoulder reassuringly and heads out towards the maester’s tower. She pretends not to feel the slap of cold, wet air, and sets her shoulders, guiltily circumventing the little sept Sansa had pointed out for her use. The late Lord of Winterfell had built it for Lady Catelyn’s comfort when she came north. Brienne has not visited. There are men camped all around the little building now, and the stink of worked leather is filling the air again. Only one of the men says anything offensive as she passes and he says it very quietly and quails when she turns her head to glare imperiously at him. The cold is so sharp, without her cloak, that her face must have already been pink.

She trudges up the steps in the maester’s tower to find Samwell Tarly in his rooms under the raven’s loft. There is even bedding in each alcove of the staircase now. That hadn’t been there when she and Jaime made the climb, she’s sure, although she might not have noticed. The men occupying them are blessedly absent. At the very top of the tower, she finds Tarly's pretty young woman curled in a wide windowsill, dandling the child of indiscriminate gender in her lap. They’re both wrapped thoroughly in furs. There is ice on the latch and metalwork even inside of the window. The two of them can keep an eye on the whole secondary courtyard from up here and see anyone coming or going. 

“I’ve seen you,” says the girl, eyes piercing.

Brienne has seen her too, but would not have chosen to put it quite like that. She keeps a careful eye on the child and sidles past. 

“I’m sure. I’m just here about some books and some supplies,” says Brienne and she raps as quietly as possible on the door, not wanting to disturb the child. 

“He won’t have heard that,” says the girl, and she turns into the child and says, “will he little Sam? Will he?” in a warm low voice that turns over in Brienne’s chest. 

She beats her fist more solidly on the door, shivering. It’s no weather to be standing idle without a cloak. 

“Are you from further south?” the girl asks. 

“I’m from Tarth.” 

“Yes,” the girl says kindly, as if speaking to someone a little slow, “you’re Ser Brienne, the maid of Tarth. Is Tarth in the south?”

“Yes,” says Brienne, hitting the door again; the child is craning its neck around to look at her and its eyes are very bulbous.

“Did you ever see the Great Sept of Baelor, before it burned?” the girl asks. 

Brienne pauses to look at her properly. She looks desperately curious. It’s as if Brienne is the most fascinating thing to happen to the two of them all day.

“I did,” says Brienne. The girl retreats a little at her abrupt tone, but the child babbles happily enough.

Brienne finds herself elaborating with the girl’s hungry eyes fixed on her and the swallowed question she can almost see in the air between them, “there were statues of each of the seven southern gods, every one of them as tall as this tower. With the candles lit at night, it felt as though they might step down and-.” 

She stops. What would the seven do? It is a strangely practical question now. The girl falls backwards, enraptured. 

“I’m going to see the Red Keep and the Great Sept and the Dragon Pit, even if I have to see them all as ruins,” she says as the door finally swings open behind Brienne.

“What’s your name?” Brienne remembers to ask.

“This is Gilly,” Samwell Tarly says, “don’t mind her, my lady. There’s still no news from your father. I’ll find you immediately if a raven comes in. You mustn’t worry yourself.” 

Brienne pulls herself up to her full height, then reminds herself that she must be kind because the man must only recently have learned that his father and brother were incinerated by a dragon. The politics of Winterfell have become very complicated. She thinks sorrowfully of poor Sansa, responsible for keeping track of it all and decides to try her very best not to take a dislike to the man. He’d let her and Jaime send their letters and delivered Jaime’s to her, respectfully unopened. 

“My lord, I’m here to borrow some simple histories and to collect some paper for letter writing.” At his look of worry, she clarifies, “They will be letters sent in the queen’s name.” 

It’s a relief to let herself back into her own warm room. Brienne finds Jaime and Gendry are still sat on the floor, now propped up against the end of the bed frame having dragged the rug far away from the fire. Jaime is recounting, in low, slightly amused tones, the details of some melee. She hopes it at least took place at Storm’s End or featured anyone still politically relevant. He cuts himself off, tracking her as she goes to stand for a moment in front of the fire, clutching the books and papers in her arms. She has ink held in her chapped hands. It hadn’t immediately frozen when she stepped outside, but it felt as if it should have. 

“Gendry was apprenticed to a master blacksmith who knew how to forge Valyrian steel and do all kinds of ornamental work,” says Jaime as she masters her shivering. 

Gendry mostly looks suspicious at his enthusiasm. 

“You could,” says Jaime, more cautiously, “ask to have the pommel on that sword altered.” 

She puts a hand to the ostentatious ruby studded gold. It would be sensible. Its gaudy Lannister colours have caused her no end of trouble, and they almost lost her Sansa and Arya for good. She knows that it’s Tywin Lannister’s taste and not Jaime’s. But it would be a frivolous waste of time. Entirely unnecessary. Gendry glances anxiously between them. 

“I don’t know where I’d find the time,” he says, “there’s more preparation for when we leave, and now all this,” he indicates Brienne as if she represents the whole responsibility of the Stormlands to him. She supposes this is currently accurate. There are all these titles sitting around in Winterfell and so few people beholden to them. 

Brienne comes to drop the books heavily between him and Jaime and sits down cross-legged with her back to the fire. Jaime crosses his feet so that his calf brushes up against her thigh. She places her papers out on top of the books, uncorks her ink and tries to decide where to start. Then allows herself to pat at Jaime’s leg while Gendry is preoccupied with gazing worriedly at the stack of books. She decides that she doesn’t want to change anything about her sword. To change it would be a lie. Oathkeeper has served her very well. 

“Maybe we should begin with Tarth?” Gendry prompts, “You can put in a note from yourself if you like?” 

Brienne’s heart seizes.

“Perhaps House Selmy,” Jaime says, and he nudges her with his feet. “Ser Brienne seemed as sure as anyone can be of their loyalty to the Baratheon name.” 

Brienne is careful as she writes out the first overture to his lords, _I, Gendry Baratheon, Lord Paramount of the Stormlands,_ written in her most carefully elegant script. Her father would be proud. The three of them string together words of duty, promised service, and a new love for the families and their people. She tries to make each message personal and hopeful. The more awed Gendry looks by his new responsibilities, the more Brienne likes him and the more sick she feels at how sure she’d been when she left Tarth, that it would remain sunny and undisturbed in her absence. 

They break for the sake of their stomachs and Brienne’s cramped wrist and back. She should have taken the chair back to the desk. On the long tables of the great hall, Gendry sits with them, sliding easily into place besides Pod. The mousy haired northern boy from last night’s meal comes past to twice to try to offer them wine. Now Tyrion has alerted Brienne to his hovering, she can not ignore it. He’s small but perhaps not so much of a boy as she had thought; there is a deeply scored wrinkle in the skin between his eyes. She wonders who owns his service. Varys no doubt. 

Finally, they write two letters to Tarth. In the first, Brienne includes her name and an appeal for her lord father, or whoever has valiantly taken up his burden, to report to their new lord and their new queen. Brienne daringly includes personal endorsements of both. In the second, she erases all mention of herself and lets her hand belong entirely to Gendry Baratheon. Gendry prefers the version where she lends her name in support of his. Jaime compares them carefully and hands her back the same copy. 

After Gendry leaves to find out if the queen is still awake to look them over, Brienne carefully places the unused letter on the mantle in case they need it after all. Jaime watches her do it, jaw jumping. She hadn’t been expecting his help to go so far. This has very quietly slid from helping her with her duties to something tantamount to working directly against his sister. 

He’d grown quieter as they worked their way through the old names to the new, and now he’s holding his right arm in his left in front of him, as if the gold is pulling at his shoulder. Brienne doesn’t know how to approach speaking about it, if Jaime isn’t going to acknowledge it himself; the sister or the hand. Besides, she has her own worries. 

“My voice might harm his cause, if they might feel I gave up my right to speak to them,” says Brienne, confessing the pressing concern.

Pod, who has been sitting in the chair, working his way through their mending by the low light of the fire since dinner looks up at her.

“I’m sure they’ll all be glad to hear from you, my lady,” he says. 

Jaime pauses, halfway to dragging himself to his feet, apparently surprised that she hasn’t seen fit to walk herself through the fire twice by telling Pod about her failed missive to Tarth as well. Pod will soon be knighted, and his fortunes will no longer be tied to hers. He doesn’t need to know her humiliation and grief yet. There’s no rush. Jaime’s eyes go back to the mantle and her letter. His mouth turns down. 

“Sons of lords go off to fight their king’s wars and return to govern during times of peace. No matter how you left, your word should carry weight,” says Jaime. This is true, and it almost maps onto what Brienne has done, if only she really were a man. She would even be returning with a knighthood. “They should have followed you when you left to fight,” says Jaime. “Every one of them should be ashamed.” He drops back onto the bed and crosses his arms over his chest. 

Brienne would not have asked them to follow her. They are too few, and it would have left the island undefended. Pod puts down his mending, looking approvingly at Jaime despite his ill temper, before a great yawn shudders through him. Their promised practice will have to wait, her duty to the stormlands has taken up all their evening. Brienne starts blowing out candles and she’s thankful when neither of them make any move to leave.

***

Brienne wakes to Jaime pushing his face against the narrow window in her room. The barest hint of morning is lighting his face so it must be late. She sits up and next to her Podrick murmurs unhappily and turns his face into the pillow, muttering himself into wakefulness. 

“Do you think they’re fully grown?” Jaime asks them, “So many of the skulls at King’s Landing seemed bigger. But perhaps I never got as close to the real thing.”

Brienne yawns widely and clicks her teeth together. Now she’s awake she can hear the dragons. She cracks her neck and scrubs the sleep from her eyes. 

“Imagine if I’d been killed by an adolescent dragon,” Jaime says, “How would that have sounded in a song?” 

Pod snorts beside her. Brienne looks down at him curiously. 

“If they get any bigger they'll be able to hear the wings beating from King’s Landing,” says Podrick foggily, “I’m grateful for them, but I won’t be sorry when they’re screaming elsewhere.” 

Brienne crooks her head. Now she concentrates she thinks she can hear the thud of their wings. She’d been distracted before, by the terrible creaking screeches. Podrick begins to lever himself up off the mattress. He looks so much better rested than he had in the days following the battle. She should have asked them to stay earlier. His eyes are clearer and the yellow bruising on his face is finally dissipating.

“Go back to sleep,” she urges him, and he shakes his head at her. “We didn’t practice last night and it’s too late to practice this morning. I am sorry, Pod.”

When she looks up, Jaime is smiling at her. She attempts to subtly remove the hand she finds she has stuck up her shirt and under her arm to scratch vigorously. His smile widens. She huffs. It’s so very wonderful to be amusing to him, she thinks, throwing back the covers to go and wash the warm comfort of bed from her bones and begin her day. 

“Jaime and I can practice, my lady,” Podrick says. 

Brienne hesitates. She wants to be there to supervise, at least at first. She’d trust Jaime’s instruction of Podrick, but she doesn’t want Jaime settling back into the rhythms of his right arm.

Jaime is looking at her strangely. 

“Brienne, let me be useful,” he says, “there’s so little for me to do here now and I’m confined to this building anyway.” Brienne still hesitates. “I promise you we’ll stay in this room and we’ll show you everything we’ve done.” 

When she leaves, they’re already shifting furniture around to make room.

It’s the end of a long morning of standing by Sansa’s shoulder while she talks to members of the castle staff and representatives from the northern houses about when and even if they plan to return to their holdfasts. Sansa has already hastily tidied her table and is straightening her sleeves, when the queen appears unexpectedly at the door. Sansa stands. 

“Jon passed along your invitation,” the queen says, walking smartly into the room. 

Sansa has planned this conversation then. It explains the sudden need for order in her papers. The queen looks like she just came from flying, windswept and practically dressed. Behind her comes her young advisor. 

“Your grace, welcome,” she motions towards one of the chairs in front of the desk she and Brienne stand behind. The queen makes no further move into the room. “Surely we won’t need a translator,” says Sansa, inclining her head towards the woman standing at Daenerys’s shoulder. The woman simply smiles politely at her. “I wanted to thank you, Missandei, for your work with the injured after the battle,” Sansa says, “your courage and kindness when we needed every hand we could gather did not go unnoticed.” 

The woman arches an elegant eyebrow, although her face somehow remains entirely pleasant. 

“Lady Sansa, Missandei is not only my translator, she is a trusted and valuable advisor,” Daenerys says, smiling fixedly, “You will also come to appreciate her insights. Surely you, however, do not need an armed guard?” 

Brienne expects Sansa to match the queen’s false pleasantness, but instead, her face transforms, and her voice becomes grave. 

“Your grace, Ser Brienne is a knight of _your_ Seven Kingdoms and daughter of the Evenstar, Lord of Tarth. She is sworn to me, personally.”

The queen’s eyes come to rest unsubtly on the gold at Brienne’s hip, the subtle red leather of the belt, her smile becoming toothier and uncomfortable looking.

“All the same...” 

The queen doesn’t demure at all as Sansa lets her stand there, waiting. Sansa’s face is troubled. Brienne wonders if she should intercede. She has already explained the sword. _Armed and armoured._ It’s why they’d trusted him enough to let him fight.

“Very well,” says Sansa, “Brienne, you are dismissed for the day. Attend to your other duties.” 

Brienne turns to her in shock. She can see a member of the queen’s unsullied general standing rigidly just outside the door.

“My lady, I can wait outside,” says Brienne. She can. She’s grown very used to it. “Or I could send you Podrick Payne again.” 

That might work very well. He doesn’t have any Lannister gold strapped to his person, just a vaguely Lannister coloured jacket, and she wants the queen to have a chance to see him. Brienne can’t leave the entirety of the responsibility of getting him noticed and knighted with Sansa.

“No, thank you, Brienne,” says Sansa. 

Brienne walks slightly dazedly around the desk and past the queen, who has dropped her rictus grin for something more genuinely curious. She pulls the door closed on them. 

The queen’s guard is the same man as before. She nods to him, and he returns the gesture before looking away, giving her a moment of privacy. He must have heard her dismissal. It’s too early to take Gendry from his work. Sansa hasn’t given her any other duties. 

At the end of the passageway, she sees a flash of movement. It’s the mousy-haired young man, the eavesdropper, stopped in the archway that turns into the great hall. 

“You!” she exclaims, stepping towards him, and he turns and runs. She tells the unsullied man, “don’t let him listen to Lady Sansa’s door.” 

She catches the barest glimpse of his annoyance. She didn’t need to give him orders. She knows that. Brienne runs. The weighty wooden doors to the great hall squeal as she charges into the strangely deserted space, so dismally dark even in the middle of the day. She’ll never catch him. Winterfell is old and closely built by generations of northern men addled by lack of sunlight. She sprints after him anyway. 

Out in the courtyard she circles in the freezing air, calling out for anyone who might have seen him go. The courtyard is as full as it always is. Women move quickly and determinedly between crowds of men, all with clear destinations. Brienne moves as they do, trying to see between the cloaked shapes, looking for a suspiciously darting movement. Some of the men watch her, vague curiosity through their thick frozen beards. Others ignore her entirely. No one interrupts their business to help her. She stops, heart like quick marching feet in her chest, frustration boiling in her gut. 

Through the front gates, a ragtag group of northmen and Wildlings ride, most with game hanging from their saddles. Tormund of giant slaying fame, is sat awkward and heavy on his horse, but he looks delighted, shouting out to his friends and guiding the horse successfully to a neat halt. 

She reaches out to arrest the progress of a passing northern woman who is huddled low in her furs. The woman shrinks from her.

“Have you seen a young man? He would have been running. Northern. This high, thin...” She indicates, still casting around over the woman’s head. She can see the hunting party dismounting and she wants to move on. When she felt frustrated like this at home, she would train. Since then there has always been more than enough to do. 

“No, ser… I mean, I’m sorry, my lady” says the woman, “there’s lots of skinny boys these days.” She’s clutching a basket of freshly folded linens close under her arm. “Please, I’m needed with the injured.” 

“It’s for Lady Sansa,” says Brienne, “I need to find him.” 

The woman looks up at her properly, more interested now Sansa’s name has been invoked, but she still shakes her head. Out of the corner of her eye, Brienne sees Tormund spot her; he points her out to the rest of the men. 

“Thank you, anyway,” she says to the woman, who scuttles immediately away once dismissed, disappearing entirely from the courtyard. 

Brienne can see Tormund closing on her. She doesn’t want to admire his catches or hear anything about what anyone else thinks of her. She hunches her shoulders and marches away, embarrassed to be driven off, even though she could stay if she wanted to, even though she has a sword and not only a basket of laundry as protection.

***

She barges back into her room to find Jaime lying listlessly on her bed, stripped down to his shirt and trousers, pink and newly clean looking. He’s holding his letter and he gathers it slowly into his fist and slides it into a pocket. Pod has vanished, she notes with annoyance. There are two blunted swords lying next to Jaime, but otherwise, everything has been put back to rights. 

“Someone is spying on Sansa,” she announces, hand still on her sword. He doesn’t even sit up.

“Is that surprising?” he says, unhelpfully, flexing his left arm through a series of movements that seem designed to protect against stiffness. Brienne draws herself up. 

“This is her home,” Brienne tells him severely, smarting again with the invasion of it. 

She supposes that if your home had largely been King’s Landing, this might seem an acceptable state of affairs to you. There had been no spying on Tarth, she’s sure. Her father would have been very dull to spy upon. Jaime sits up on the bed. 

“Do you want us to… do something about the spy?” he asks, beginning to look interested. 

The _us_ glides revelatory along Brienne’s frustration. She takes a breath and she tries to think about it as Sansa would. There might be some kind of hidden trap in exposing the spy. What if he’s been fed lies to spread if they catch him? What if he belonged to the Queen herself - explaining the unsullied man’s lack of worry - and it wouldn’t be politic to expose him? What if, what if. What she’d like is action.

“He knows I’ve seen him now so he might be wary,” she tells Jaime, trying to talk it through aloud, “but you and Podrick could help to grab him.” 

Jaime raises his eyebrows at her, looking more awake by the second.

“Alright,” he says, “what does the spy look like?” 

Brienne describes him. Mousy hair, small face, deep groove between his brows, the one with the jugs of water. Jaime’s face falls as she speaks. 

“What’s wrong now?” she asks. 

The boy can’t be Tyrion’s. Tyrion had been worried by his eavesdropping. 

“Brienne, that one isn’t spying on Sansa, he is Sansa’s,” Jaime says, “You don’t want us to grab the poor boy. She won’t thank you.” 

He stands and gathers up the tourney swords. Brienne blinks through the rush in her ears and the wide absence in her lungs. 

“How could you possibly know that?” she asks, her voice sounding louder and somehow further away than she had intended.

“Tyrion,” Jaime says, leaning the swords by the mantle and not even looking at her, as if this whole affair is of minimal interest. “He came by to pick up Podrick to help with work on his saddles, and he’d noticed - just as you have - the boy hovering at mealtimes, so he found out, and he told us.” 

Tyrion, who possibly slipped up and gave Brienne information about Varys’s disloyalty. Or Tyrion who pretended to be drunk enough to dodge responsibility for passing Brienne information Sansa could use. Or Tyrion… Brienne doesn’t want to have to think like this. 

“Brienne,” says Jaime and she opens her eyes to see him already close, ducking into her line of sight to try to force eye contact, concern on his face. She steps back. “Brienne, you shouldn’t worry. We just have to let them all get on with this kind of thing.” 

Brienne doesn’t want to do that. King’s Landing had been like this, only worse because she’d had to wear a dress. At least there she’d known on arrival that she’d soon be leaving. Winterfell hasn’t been like that. She doesn’t want it to become that. She’s not made for this sort of court and she doesn’t know how to keep them all safe within it. 

“I should talk to Sansa about this,” Brienne says, retreating again to avoid the placating reach of Jaime’s hand, “she doesn’t need waste her energies spying on me.” 

Jaime smiles soothingly at her. 

“It’s nothing to worry about,” he says, “You’re never going to do anything traitorous for her to find, clearly, so why upset her needlessly?”

He reaches out towards her face. She intercepts his wrist and wrenches. There’s a moment where she thinks he’s going to step into her and try to use his weight to break the hold. He tenses to do it. She can see it in the shift of his weight. He’s not going to manage it. This is something she knows. Instead, he stills. She flexes her fingers, trying and failing to feel his pulse through the thin linen of his shirt. She watches his lips part. She waits for him to move forward, anticipation burning in her stomach. When she flicks her eyes up, she finds he’s looking down at the fingers she has on Oathkeeper’s hilt and not at her mouth. Then he does lean forward. A quick, warm touch of his lips against hers. She doesn’t have time to decide whether to move into it. 

He says, voice liquid but awkwardly loud, “Are we playing that I’m your prisoner again?” 

She shoves him away from her.

“No,” she says, earnestly. “How could you think that?” 

His eyes are big and apologetic. She’s burning up. She tears off her cloak and fumbles to get her sword belt undone, trying to shake the sickness of it away. When she goes to lay her gear over the desk, Jaime moves too, circling, a swordsman keeping an equal distance from an opponent. She’s grateful for the space. She marches back to collapse into the chair that he and Pod have placed carefully back by the fire. It’s burning low again; someone should tend to it. 

After a moment, Jaime crouches where he is, still distant, making himself low, steady eye contact, like she’s a skittish animal.

“I shouldn’t have kept coming at you like that,” he says. 

That’s fine, so long as she doesn’t have to discuss what happened after. She focusses on the spy. She wishes she’d grabbed him. She’s glad she didn’t. There’s nothing else she can do about it today. She’s been dismissed, but only until tomorrow. It just aches. 

“I thought she knew she could trust me,” says Brienne. 

Jaime sighs.

“It’s almost certainly just that she doesn’t trust me.” But that’s the same issue here. Brienne vouched for him. Brienne had said she’d marry him. He’s her responsibility. Sansa doesn’t need spies. “Her mistrust is sensible. And it’s like with-,” Jaime cuts himself off, “She needs to know, so she can control what she can. I know how this feels, but it’s harmless to you, I promise, because you’re loyal and hers.” 

Brienne blinks at him, still balanced low on his toes, looking at her with that burst open affection, thinking he knows so much. 

“She’s not someone like your sister,” Brienne says, “She doesn’t need to be. Not with me. And that’s not how this should work.” 

Jaime’s lips thin. 

“I know she’s not like-,” he grits out, “She trusts you,” Jaime says, “as much as she trusts almost anyone, I’m sure. She wouldn’t let us-.” 

He gestures back at the bed and Brienne feels herself flush, involuntary and embarrassing. Sansa is letting them, is the thing, if she’s been keeping close watch, if she knows, so there’s nothing to be ashamed about. If Sansa wanted her to stop, she would ask, and Brienne would find a way to do it. 

She’s so tired of embarrassment. Brienne sits up to tug off her boots. Jaime watches her do it, stilling. It’s just her boots, Brienne thinks tiredly, they’re all so difficult, all these people poisoned by King’s Landing.

“We don’t have to-” she says, gesturing towards the bed, even though it makes her feel sicker and grubbier than any spy leaning over her shoulder. 

She tries to place her boots aside casually. Jaime leans forward like he doesn’t quite understand. “If you’re-” she swallows the word _scared_. He’s a man, isn’t he? 

“No,” he says violently, starting to his feet, “I’m not-. Brienne.” 

He so obviously wants her to understand something. She waits, for him to clarify or for him to turn it into some empty joke. Instead, Jaime steps towards her and Brienne experiences the strange, slightly gut turning sensation of looking up at him. He leans down cautiously, looking to kiss the uneven lip she has pulled between her teeth. He reaches out to tilt her up towards him. It’s so soft. It’s awkward to crane her neck. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands. It’s not as sweet as it was when she had his wrist caught, which itself is a thought that prickles uncomfortably along her awkwardly half raised arms. It makes her twitch to have him crowded above her like this. Maybe it scares her, just a little.

“You do need another chair,” he says and drops down to his knees between her legs. Almost immediately, it’s better. More than that, it’s good. His hand on her jaw is explanatory now, not controlling. She can put her hands to his upper arms and hold him. He’s the one reaching, stretching to snap at her, so it doesn’t feel wrong to push back. She kisses him until she feels like she’s been running in full armour and she can hardly think about any spies at all. She kisses him until he strokes his hand down the line of her jaw and then up the inside of her knee. 

What she wants is hazy. She tips her head back. Jaime kisses her where her collarbone lies under layers of wool and linen and leather. There is a pink space between the sick dreaming fantasy of peeling him from Renly’s armour and the pleasingly practical reality of him in a freezing field, asking to serve and then living. 

He strokes his hand a little further up her thigh. A little higher still. He turns his face into her, his beard scratching against her neck, the press of his lips at the hinge of her jaw. She still has her hands on his upper arms, the grip tight. If she let go, he could put his hands higher. He could put his arms around her waist. She drags in more air then turns her head to mimic him, pushing at him with her nose until he turns enough for her to push a kiss of her own to the pulse at the softer edge of hair on his neck. She wants to feel the rhythm, cantering quick in his chest. She could. She could do anything she liked to him if she could just let go of his arms. 

She’s heard men talk about this casually, incessantly, almost every day. They’ve talked about women crying and screaming and pleading, for them to stop, for them to start. Men have been threatening her with this since before she left the safety of home. She’s tried not to hear, not to think about it. Nothing has prepared her for the gentle pass of his knuckles against the bunched muscle at the root of her thigh. Soldiers laugh about women wanting. It doesn’t feel funny. It’s too fast, slipping out of her control. 

She could do it if it was like a fight, if she didn’t have to hold still for it, except that it makes her ill to think it. It’s how she’d always thought of it, under the assurance that she’d kill anyone who tried. 

She lets go of him and drags herself away from his warmth. Hunger makes her feel nauseous too, when it’s new. Jaime balances himself with his hand on her thigh. He considers her and twitches a slightly teasing look of concern at her.

“You know, we don’t have to-” he says and mimics the gesture she had made towards the bed earlier, “if you’re-” he trails off, again in imitation of her.

He’s confident that she wants him. He’s right, of course. She just has to work out how to trick her body into having him. It’s supposed to hurt, but it can’t hurt like bears claws, and it can’t hurt like a metal plated fist. She hadn’t held still for those either.

She reaches out to tug at his shirt, to see if she can make him clutch at it virginally again, half afraid that he’ll do it, half wanting to triumph somehow by being less cowardly than him. Instead, he grins a little wryly, clearly reading the memory in her eyes and tugs the whole thing quickly over his head. 

There’s time to look. Time to calm her purposelessly panicked heart. There’s light hair on his chest, smooth skin over arced collarbones, hardly a scar to comment on. He had been very good, of course, with his sword and his lance. She thought maybe to uncover some bruise or scrape. Some hidden injury. Even the queen bore marks from that battle. 

Although that’s forgetting, one gold hand, held in place by tooled leather. None of it she hasn’t seen before, years ago in the baths of Harrenhal, but more recently too, glimpsed while they dress, the curve of the blades in his back as he tugged into his shirt yesterday morning after a quick wash by the fire. He shifts a little and leans his hip and his elbow on her leg. She has to tense up again to support his weight. She hesitates, her hand extended. 

“Wait, Brienne, are you actually worried about this?” 

Brienne decides that she is done with embarrassment. She reaches out to touch him before the opportunity passes her by. She smooths her hands down his bare arms, too close now to deny herself the feel the little blond hairs she can see catching the firelight. She can hardly feel them until she tries with her fingertips, running back up against the grain, an added sandy softness. She strokes again to watch his chest and stomach move as he drags in air. She reaches out to touch the delicate skin of his stomach with the backs of her fingers. He shuffles closer between her legs. She rides through the involuntary clench of her muscles and practices a deliberate, careful relaxation, although of course, pressed this close he hasn’t missed it. It’s only an amateurs instinct for retreat, when to take the advantage she needs to push up inside the guard of the enemy. He only needs to let her push through it. 

He says, “My septa said-.” Brienne freezes with her thumbs on the lowest point of his ribs. Jaime stops breathing, then inhales noisily. “When I was-.” He comes to another abrupt halt. He sits back on his heels and passes his hand over his face. She prods him with her foot.“When I was being... ah. Oh well.” 

“When you were what?” asks Brienne, in a rush which burns scaldingly through her. He looks up at her despairingly. Boys don’t have septas. She must have been his sisters. It seems strange for him to suddenly be inhabiting some level of shame about this. It douses the confused heat that had brought sweat to her upper lip. She tugs at her shirt and rubs at her face. He’s still looking up at her plaintively. Brienne is suddenly very glad she’s still wearing clothes. 

“When I was my sister,” he says resignedly. 

He twists his mouth again. 

Brienne pulls all the foolish, lust scattered parts of herself back together. Perhaps his septa said something useful.

“What did your septa say to you?” she asks. He just flexes his fingers in his lap, looking as though there might be parts of himself that he’s still gathering too. Brienne tells him, “Mine told me nothing about this except that I was ugly, that it would hurt and that a husband would be cruel.”

Jaime scowls. 

“What could she know,” he says and pushes himself back to sit and ease out his legs. She really does need another chair. “Ours was clever. It felt like she knew everything there was to know, except perhaps-.” He picks at one of the straps on his arm.

“Jaime,” she prompts, trying to get back to the practicalities.

She feels awkward now, sitting up on the chair looking down at him. She pushes at him again with her foot so he’ll shuffle backwards and give her room to drop down next to him. 

Jaime says, “She told me it needn’t hurt and that most highborn girls lose their maidenhead to horseback anyway. She made it sound filthy.” 

He frowns for a moment longer before smoothing the expression away. Brienne meanwhile is experiencing a steadily growing feeling of outrage. 

“What are the septons and maesters checking for then?” she says. He blinks at her, as though the question isn’t the obvious train to that statement. 

He says, “My-,” and stops again and grimaces. Of course, it’s Cersei. But Cersei might actually have had the answer and Brienne wants to know.

“Look we can’t not mention her,” says Brienne, “Clearly. Tell me what she said.” 

Jaime gets up to pull his shirt back on. 

“This isn’t from anyone from inside the faith, or any maester, it’s just what she used to say, but they’re checking for pregnancy, having a good leer and then saying whatever they think people want to hear.”

Brienne is revolted, arriving so quickly at pure rage that she feels lightheaded again. She’s so angry that she has to stand up and move. Jaime watches her. She hates it. 

“It’s all a big lie so that some nasty old man can claim power and piety and pore all over us?” she spits. 

Jaime shrugs. “I agree that they could do away with the leering maesters, it used to make us so angry, but checking for pregnancy before marriage makes a certain amount of sense.” 

She supposes he has a personal interest in cuckoldry. 

“None of it makes sense,” says Brienne, except that of course it does, everyone is weighing out all their little measures of control and acting out their own sick fantasies on anyone who, even for a moment, has a little less power than they do. Even his sister, who is a queen capable of capriciously killing hundreds, is subject to a maester’s petty abuses. 

There had been that man at Harrenhal. Brienne bunches her hands into fists. She had liked the maester on Tarth. He’d never grasped at her to her knowledge, but then none of her suitors had ever asked to have her examined. No one ever intimated that she might be touched by anything except violence or dragging obligation.

“Why does everyone go on and on about bleeding and pain?” 

It seems to take Jaime a moment to realise that it’s a genuine question. He twitches his hands at her in a gesture of resignation. 

“Most common folk don’t have horses to give to their daughters?” Jaime suggests, bringing his shoulders up and letting them fall again. “She was only a girl, now that I look back. And marriages seem mostly cruel; your septa was more than right about that.”

Brienne has seen enough of the world to know that for herself. Brienne held Sansa against her chest and pretended not to notice, trying desperately to give her some sense of privacy, when she shook, silently and tearlessly on the ride to Castle Black. She casts about the room. There’s nothing. Some histories. Various tat on the mantle. An unmade bed she can’t use for anything except chastely sleeping next to a man she’s been dreaming of for years. There are swords. 

“Let’s practice. Pick up one of the swords,” she tells him.

Jaime blinks at her. He takes a stutter step to actually do it and then stops. 

“You realise I won’t be able to give you a good fight,” he says. 

“Put your boots on and pick up a sword,” she says, marching over to shove her feet into her boots before picking up her sword belt. She looks over at him where he’s watching her, unmoving. “Please, Jaime,” she says. She wants to move. She wants to do something useful and practical and there is nothing else. 

It takes Jaime longer to get his feet into his. Then he picks up both tourney swords, tucks one under his arm and comes close to offer her the other. 

He indicates Brienne’s hard hold on Oathkeeper’s hilt and sheath, “You’ll shatter one of these things in my hand the very first pass.”

Brienne looks down at the proffered ugliness of the tourney sword and then up at his tight green eyes. She feels ill, like King’s Landing is somehow in the room, even though the air is crisp. She thinks about the delicacy of his collarbones, his wrist in her hand. She swallows.

“I’m going to be back before it’s time to fetch Gendry for his lessons,” she tells him. She grabs her cloak and her daggers, and she leaves.

***

Brienne arrives back at Sansa’s door to find it unguarded. Either the queen has left or the unsullied man has been invited in. She hovers for a moment, listening. Sansa had dismissed her for the day; she had been clear. Brienne knocks anyway and Jon Snow opens the door.

“Brienne. Good. Please come in,” says Sansa. Inside Arya and Bran stare at her with identical brown eyes. Jon Snow shuts the door behind her and goes back to take up his seat next to Bran by the fire. Brienne drifts forwards, waiting to be prompted to speak, but Sansa turns back to Jon. 

“Now, Jon,” she says, “Brienne can confirm, I made the queen feel so very respected.” 

It was just a show then. Letting the queen feel like she could pressure Sansa into giving up ground. Brienne feels a little of her tension bleed from her, only exhaustion in its wake. Everyone is playing so many games with such high stakes. She’s just trying to see Podrick come to their attention.

“It’s not a question of whether I believe you,” Jon says. Sansa stares thinly at him. 

He flicks his eyes at Brienne in an unsubtle question. Sansa waits. 

“Was it enough?” he asks. 

“It won’t ever be enough, you know that. Not even once she has seven kingdoms to feast on.” 

Jon turns to Bran who stares back sorrowfully. 

“There’s no one else,” he says, which is not an endorsement that Brienne finds particularly inspiring. “Look - if she keeps wanting, she’ll keep trying, to keep their love and their respect. It’s not a one-sided devouring with her, Sansa. She’ll let them consume her in return.” 

Sansa stares at him coldly.

“So you think it will be a mutual destruction? How wonderful. How unnecessary. Think of our father; that was a noble, sustaining service, for him and our people.” Jon shakes his head, but he won’t look at her again. “Unless Bran has decided to share anything actually useful with us?”

“The three-eyed raven does not exist to be useful,” says Bran. 

Sansa rolls her eyes and Arya snorts inelegantly. Brienne doesn’t think he means it to be a joke.

“Well, we’ll just have to wait, like everyone else, and see what she decides now,” Sansa says. 

She stands crisply and comes to look up at Brienne, putting her back to the others. 

“I was going to apologise tomorrow, Brienne, for the performance. I hope you understand that it was necessary. How can I help you now?” 

Brienne feels unmoored from her earlier urgent need for action, but she came here for a reason. It will anchor her. She thinks she will enjoy it. 

“Thank you, my lady. But I came because I hoped to find Arya.” 

She rests her hand on her sword. None of them exhibits any sign of tension. Arya is looking up at her though, surprise on her face. 

“I wanted to ask if you would like to train together again.” 

Arya grins at her and hops to her feet.

“Let’s go now. All this subterfuge and politicking isn’t really my area,” 

Sansa and Jon both turn to her with identical looks of incredulity and judgement. Brienne doesn’t see what’s so terrible about wanting to move through the world a little more honestly. That is why Brienne had suddenly wanted her; another fighter with the skill and the tools to more than match her. 

“My lady, could I give Jaime his sword back now?” 

It’s out of her mouth without conscious thought. The slight pause this gives Sansa makes Brienne’s heart clench. If Sansa is willing to let her family talk treason in front of Brienne then Jaime is probably right, the spy is for her only in that it is for him. Brienne tries to think of it as Sansa would. She could ask for Jaime’s word. It might mean more to them now they understand why he broke his oaths. Bran is sitting there looking at her. She doesn’t believe it.

“Very well,” says Sansa, at a disinterested remove once again, and she goes to pull the sword from where it has been lying unused in a sideboard. The surfaces in this room are all completely clear of decorative objects, Brienne had not noticed before. Everything in Winterfell is so very sparse and practical, so different from Evenfall. It should suit Brienne, but Brienne isn’t sure that it suits Sansa. Brienne takes the ornate sword from her with a rushing sense of relief that drowns out her guilt. Arya smiles again in a way that Brienne doesn’t entirely like.

Out in the courtyard, drenched in sweat, with all the residual frustration and rage bleached from her bones, Brienne finds that their sparring has gained an audience, most notably, Sandor Clegane. Arya nods to him with a smirk as she squares up again, Needle in one hand, her dagger held confidently in the other. Brienne considers. Oathkeeper has a long reach, unwieldy without the occasional support of a second hand. She motions for Arya to pause and goes to swap it for Jaime’s lighter sword, selecting her long dagger as she does. 

“Worn out?” Arya calls. 

Brienne comes back, smiling at her, although she can feel that it’s awkward on her face. There’s some undercurrent to this that she doesn’t follow, but she used to fight with two weapons more often. It will be a good use of time to stay in practice. 

Arya circles her, stalking predator low. She uncoils. Arya wins the first exchange, knocking Jaime’s sword into the ground and coming up under Brienne’s rusty left-handed guard. Brienne flexes her grip, considering. 

Arya, mollified, retreats to let her gather herself, alight at the new challenge. This time Brienne hardly gives her time to engage. Her playful confidence lets Brienne in close, and then Arya doesn’t have the strength to stop herself from being driven down onto the icy ground. Arya picks herself up, brushing dirt-logged snow and ice from her clothes, focussed and glaring again.

“Tell us how you’ve acquired even more Lannister gold, good knight,” says Clegane, his voice low but carrying, “I’ve heard whispers.”

Brienne flushes despite herself. She’d decided she was done with blushing and quailing from that. If only these things were as simple as deciding. 

“You can tell me what men are saying with your sword in your hand,” calls Brienne. 

She’ll eat the other side of his face. There is a ripple of amusement but the crowd also shifts away from him. Jaime practices in secret. The men have a an image of him - not a flattering one, but a useful one - that might be tarnished by the appearance of hard work. Brienne practices in public. She needs to keep reminding them that the painting they make of her isn’t a joke. She means to scare them. 

“Shut up, Clegane. I can look after myself,” says Arya. 

The amused murmur of the other folk watching falls away. This time they manage a few extended passes. Brienne has time to adjust to the new weight in the familiar forms. The last time she fought like this her sword was well balanced but comparatively cumbersome in her hands. Arya tries her trick of dropping the knife again, and Brienne knocks it out of the air with the back of her glove, baring her teeth triumphantly as she moves in to use her weight once more. This time Arya lets her come. Brienne finds her own height used to topple her into cold mud and Needle’s point at her throat. 

A wave of scattered approval comes up from the courtyard. Arya looks up, frowning and puts out her hand, making a show of friendliness. Brienne plays along and pretends that Arya is pulling her to her feet. Arya looks at her with consternation, then she sighs. 

“Show me what you did with your sword hand to distract me during the knife drop,” Arya suggests. 

From then on, they are so dull and studious that the crowd falls away. Only the Hound is left, carefully observing their every move. 

When they stop, Arya’s face is a blotchy red, and the frozen air is ripping razor sharp down Brienne’s throat with each laboured gasp. Brienne feels glorious. She turns to the Hound, who can say whatever he likes now. She could go back to Jaime right this minute, and he would be waiting for her in her room. She might do it. She meets the Hound’s eyes. 

“Kill me quicker, if we ever fight again,” he says. 

Her blood is cooling. The desperate guilt she’d felt after their last bloody encounter adds to the drop. None of that had been exhilarating. She's suddenly shivering with sweat. 

“Why would we fight?” 

“Fucked if I know,” he says, and he glares at Arya before he stomps away. 

Brienne looks down at her, reassuring herself. Arya looks as fiercely alive as ever, small and safe and deadly. 

They go down to the hot springs to warm their tired limbs. There are so many in the castle now, and so few idle servants to carry water, that there are organised shifts of male and female entry for efficiency. Brienne has grown so used to being clean. None of the dead made it down here. It helps that there are few others with the luxury of time to bathe at this time of day, but they stay long enough that other highborn ladies filter in, laughing and in ecstasies over the heat. Brienne nods to the woman who sleeps somewhere off the same staircase and whose dark curly hair apparently tumbles down to brush below her ribs when loose, and Arya brightly greats them all before the two of them slink away.

It’s already so late - dark and snowing heavily - that Brienne goes straight to the forges to collect Gendry. She and Gendry arrive back at the blessedly warm room to find Jaime, lying with his boots kept off the bed, dressed exactly how she left him. The tourney swords are lying next to him again. 

“Podrick’s still not back,” he says, dragging himself up to his elbows. 

Brienne tries not to flush. She tries. Jaime sees Gendry, stiffens for a moment and then he gets smoothly to his feet, moving to shrug into his jacket with his back to them. He fumbles, tightening the neck of his shirt. He’s kept the fire built up.

Gendry clears his throat awkwardly and Jaime pivots to glare with his his chin high. 

“Here, Jaime,” she says, charging through the embarrassment and holding out his sword. 

Jaime blinks at her, jaw slackening, then he strides over to gather it and her hand to his chest. Gendry turns away towards the fire. 

“Sorry,” he says, under his breath, “Should I speak to him?” 

Brienne heaves her shoulders. She hadn’t been thinking. She had promised that she would come back alone. And people are already talking, apparently, not that they’ve yet managed anything together worth whispering about. Gendry won’t add to it, she doesn’t think, although his pretence of intense interest in the carvings on the mantle is mortifying. 

“What could you say?” 

They discover quickly that it does matter that Brienne does not remember how she learned to read. No matter how patient Gendry is with her, she cannot work out how to explain to him why the letters he already has some understanding of, form the words they do. Surely it can’t be this complicated. Worse, Gendry seems to have some other system memorised, impenetrable presumably to anyone except him and his old master, but polished as a means for communicating things Brienne has no understanding of: fire intensities and metal craft. 

She wants to go back to teaching Podrick how to gut fish, wield an axe and pick stones from the hooves of horses. She’d prefer to give dance lessons than continue with this, and she mutters as much to Jaime, but she’s begun and she means to see it through. Sansa has asked so little of her these last seven days in the wake of the battle. 

The more visibly frustrated she becomes, the more Jaime slowly takes over responsibility for the lesson. He begins with bizarre suggestions: pace the room while you repeat the letters that make up your name, or, practice drawing those letters with your finger on the rug. 

They stop, to the relief of every one of them, for the evening meal. Jaime presses up against her side while they sit in the great hall, Pod returned to them by an apologetic Tyrion. Tyrion had also wanted to walk out to meet the southern soldiers apparently. 

“Who did you find worth fighting this afternoon?” Jaime asks her. 

Brienne looks up to the high table. Arya is absent. Daenerys is surveying them all, looking more drawn and pale than ever. It doesn’t look like weakness on her, but it still makes Brienne feel sorry for her. 

“I tried your sword,” she tells him, “one-handed, and my long dagger.” He turns entirely on the bench, lighting up with interest, and across the table Tyrion groans.

They find, back in her room with Podrick for their long-promised practice session, that Jaime remembers as little of learning to fight right handed with a sword as Brienne does of learning to read. He’s been training his left arm by just throwing himself at Ser Ilyn Payne, the crown’s executioner - Podrick takes this news quietly but very poorly - and the sellsword Tyrion hired. Brienne will concede that the sellsword seems to have been a competent opponent, but secrecy and confidentiality have taken precedence over a proper regimen. There are surely swordmaster’s in King’s Landing who would have done a more thorough job with him. 

Podrick first demonstrates that Jaime has done no harm at all to Brienne’s instruction on his form during their morning practice and then, satisfied, Brienne starts in on the puzzle of Jaime’s left-handed style, which is clearly one of resentful practicality with none of the fiery interest that drives his observations of Podrick’s progress. Every time she uncovers some new weakness in his technique he recognises it as she does, quiet acceptance in his eyes. Eventually she knocks his sword clean out of his hand, just to see the jump of true frustration in his eyes. After that he’s sharper, better, she thinks that he’ll improve even further now they have time to work together. She works him over until he’s breathless and rosy with exertion. When she calls them to a halt, he smiles at her around his gasping breaths.

The three of them fall into bed, with no question of anyone returning to sleep alone, all their swords resting over Brienne’s desk, Jaime turns into her in the dark. 

He says, “Let me be useful with your blacksmith Paramount. I learned slowly as a child, and my father had to step in. He took agonies over teaching me. I know what actually sticks. There’s nothing else for me to do here.” 

Brienne is already drifting. Well earned exhaustion washing worry from her thoughts. It’s so unlike the throbbing unquenchable tiredness of the cold nights after the battle. She is more than happy to accept.

***

Pod wakes them when the window is still ink black and they practice their sword work. Then it is so cold that they build up the fire and climb back into bed. Pod wakes them for the second time, climbing out of bed again. The air is still frosty when he lifts up the covers. Jaime huddles further down next to her, their hands curled against each other, his feet tangled up with hers. Pod slips out of the room. 

“Jaime,” she prompts. He strokes a foot along her ankle and turns into the blanket he has pulled up over his mouth. “Jaime, I’ve had a thought about you using the right hand on the pommel, for extra support, like with the spade.” 

Jaime shakes his head.

“Tried it. Hand’s too smooth, even with a glove. Looks fine in theory but in practice it makes me a broader target to no benefit.” There is still almost no light in the room, the greyness of low, thick clouds rather than night at the window, and the fire has burned low behind its guard.

“It if gets any colder I’ll leave you all and go back to King’s Landing,” he says and with his eyes still closed, he gathers her in unselfconsciously with a leg. “Where’s Podrick?” 

“Gone for food.” 

“You should knight him already. I need things to do. I could fetch food.”

“The queen might knight him still.” 

“If you say so,” he says. Brienne stares at the criss cross weave of rough wool over his face. 

“Don’t placate me.”

“I’m not,” he says, still muffled, “You’ll do what’s best for him, but it would mean a lot to Podrick if you were to do it.” 

She sits up, dragging the blanket with her, getting one foot out onto the cold floor before she stops herself. He levers himself up until he can see her face again. Scrubbing at his eyes and then sitting, round shouldered, squinting at her. She wonders what he sees when he looks at her so intently. 

“There are so many places where people will laugh when he tells them who knighted him,” Brienne says, and his eyes slip back into wide sadness. 

She doesn’t want him to tell her those people are wrong again. That’s meaningless, now they’re all going to live. She has to consider what’s real and practical. 

“I know,” he says solemnly, and she lets herself be reeled back in, pulling her uncomfortably exposed leg back to sit under the covers. “But Brienne, almost no one will ask. Maybe at tourneys, very occasionally. He has a recognisable name. People will just be expecting a Ser Podrick Payne,” Brienne blinks at him. “It’s a legitimate concern,” he says. “I don’t deny it.” 

She pushes in to kiss the edge of his mouth so quickly that she doesn’t have time to be embarrassed. He tries to follow when she pulls back.

“Could you change the shape of the hand? So it was more useful?” 

Jaime smiles at her.

“Why a hand and not a hook, you mean? Pass it to me.” 

Brienne leans back over the bed to retrieve it. 

“I already had more straps added because the thing fell off if I moved suddenly,” his smile widens again as if he’s swallowing a laugh, “it flew off once and made a terrible noise.” 

She watches him tug the leather guard over his wrist and then strap the metal into place. 

“Yes,” she says, “why not a hook?” 

It had seemed very rude to bring it up. 

“Honestly not as practical for daily life as you might think,” Jaime says, and it’s true that she’s seen him hold thin stemmed goblets in that hand, and use the wide palm as support to help his left hand hold cloaks and sift through ash and dead men. “Also, I’m a very vain man,” - Brienne looks at him doubtfully, he’s a pretty man, which is a separate matter - “and this is very well made,” he says. 

Brienne looks it over. Intricate patterns curve over the metal, and the same designs are mirrored on the tooled leather straps. 

“It’s true,” he says, leaning towards her, amusement in his eyes, “I’m so very vain and prideful. That’s why you have to let me fetch you cloak and boots from now on, and teach your Lord Blacksmith to read, and help with Podrick. It’s so my enormous sense of self-importance can be soothed by how very useful I am to you, Brienne.” 

He climbs over her entirely unnecessarily to get out of bed. He makes a show of moving the fire screen, stoking the guttering flames and adding new wood. Brienne watches him, inordinately pleased. 

“Do you really not mind trying to teach Gendry? It was me who told Sansa I should do it. He’s my lord, my responsibility.”

“If we are really to be married.” Jaime says, “wouldn’t he be my lord too?” 

This is even more pleasing.

“You can’t call him Lord Blacksmith or any of that then.” 

Jaime climbs over her again, back onto the bed, pretending to frown.

“I can. But I promise to point out to you anyone else who does.” He leans in to touch the tip of a finger against the smile she’s suppressing with only a little caution. “Besides, It’s not a bad idea for me to practice writing with my left hand. I’m even worse than I am with a sword unless I take all day over every letter.” 

The day stretches out before Brienne. Training with Pod and Jaime. The duties of the day with Sansa. Talking with Gendry about the Stormlands. Training again. This could be their routine, at least for a while, until she decides what to do about Tarth. None of her people are leaving when the army moves out. It all feels dangerously like something she could live with very happily. 

“We’ll work on the sword hand,” Brienne says, “It’s already so much better than I expected.” 

Jaime’s smile is understated and genuine, with no showy flash of teeth. 

“It occurs to me that everyone but you is getting rather a lot out of our little tutoring enterprise.”

“I’m happy to be of service,” she says. 

Jaime looks at her in the worshipful way that is becoming familiar. He pushes up onto his knees to kiss her, so far and so sudden, that for a moment she’s tilting awkwardly backwards, precarious on the edge of the bed. Then she pushes back into him and he falls away, dragging her down with him so that she’s hovering over him like before. The castle sounds more awake now, and the hazy snow filtered light is finally giving a violet colour to the window panes. She watches Jaime’s eyes flicker with every echoing crash and shout from the men setting up for the day in the courtyard and then still as someone drags their feet down the steps outside their door. Soon the noise will all blend into one continuous hubbub. 

She lets herself be pulled down into him. She’s learning a little about kissing and a lot about frustration.

“Your queen said this will be the last war, which sounds very glorious,” Jaime says eventually, and Brienne finds that trying to kiss a talking mouth is rather fun. “You’re a great warrior and a knight of her kingdoms. You’re involved in their planning. You don’t want to see it?” 

Brienne gives up on kissing. She has no particular desire to ever fight in a battle again, but wanting doesn’t come into it. Her duty lies elsewhere. 

“I’m not looking for glory. My place is with Sansa or Tarth.” 

He smooths his hand down to the small of her back and she has to roll away from him, shuddering. 

“She might ask you to march with her. Sansa could not refuse her.” 

Brienne supposes that’s is true. He thins his lips as someone starts shouting about wagons so loudly in the courtyard that it carries all the way to their window. The queen hadn’t wanted Brienne in the room while she talked to Sansa. She’s not going to request that Brienne abandon Sansa, one of her few westerosi allies, just to have one more sword at her side. Jaime grabs for her fingers. 

“She doesn’t want Winterfell defenceless. Besides, she will not ask. She doesn’t know me and she doesn’t trust me.” 

“Sorry about that,” he says, unrepentant. He stares up at the ceiling, his expression turning sour. “But would you be able to tell me if they had decided to send you with Jon Snow? I know you won’t break Sansa’s council, but you would at least tell me that?” 

“Unless they gave me a very good explanation for why I couldn’t.” 

Jaime nods. His profile softens. 

“I’m flattered anyone believes me capable of some meaningful betrayal, shut up here in the keep with only one hand.”

Feeling daring, wanting to reassure, she reaches out and touches the fading tightness in his cheek. He closes his eyes and leans into her. Encouraged, she reaches over to grasp his right arm and pull him over to face her. He comes easily and lies still. She strokes the silk of his eyelids, delicate at the very edges where the skin is so pink as to look vaguely abraded. She has never seen a face so close and so receptive to her gaze. He blinks her fingers away and pushes them down onto the bed with his gold hand. A movement that would be difficult with a hook. There are gold flecks in his eyes. 

“Tell me about Tarth?” 

Brienne sits up and frowns down at him, trying to think of where to start. Jaime raises his eyebrows at her, expectant. Pod knocks, which is new, and then lets himself back into the room. Jaime and Brienne make room for him on the bed. 

“Thank the gods, it’s colder than ever out there,” says Podrick, distributing warm bowls and then dragging a fur over his lap. 

Jaime starts picking out peas as though he expects he’ll see the horse again soon. Brienne watches severely. 

“I saw Tarth once from a ship. It was small, had tall hills, and it was very green,” says Jaime, prompting. That is an accurate if unromantic description. Podrick looks to him curiously. “The sea seemed bluer there,” he adds.

Brienne turns her spoon in the vegetable speckled mush of bread, gravy, so different from what they would be eating on Tarth. 

“I used to find bronze arrowheads in the ruined castle on the cliffs at the far side of the island,” Brienne tells them and then she pauses, trying to begin again with something more practical, unsure as to why she had started there.

“What’s Evenfall like, my lady? Like the Red Keep, or more like Winterfell?” asks Podrick. 

“Neither. Older in parts,” Brienne says. They watch her, waiting. “There are painted panels that have survived for longer than anyone knows how to explain all through the halls. It’s damp, because of the rain, but there are families who learn how to keep them safe, you see.” 

The ceilings are high and the marble is cool underfoot in the summer, the wood warmly scuffed in winter. The more she talks, the more her heart aches. She wonders if Tarth is still the same place. Are the people’s days already starting in darkness in Tarth too? She trails off during a description of the women who work the salt pits to shovel down the last of her food. Pod gets up to tidy away his and Brienne’s breakfast things. Jaime watches him do it.

“Brienne, if you believe you need to go now - if that’s what your instincts tell you is needed - we could do that. Or, you could do that,” Jaime says. 

Podrick comes back to them, holding out Brienne’s boots to her, concerned.

“I’ll go with you. But where, my lady?” he prompts. 

Brienne takes a deep breath. Jaime looks between them cautiously. 

“I wrote to my father and Tarth eight nights ago and I have received no reply. It’s possible they never received the letter. It’s possible there is some reasonable explanation for their lack of reply, but Lord Gendry sent his letter two nights ago now. If we hear nothing again-.” Brienne cuts herself off, finding her voice has grown strained. They should have sent the letter on the mantlepiece. The one where her voice is absent. Perhaps it is still Renly, after all this time. Perhaps they have come to believe her capable of that. Sometimes, before she sleeps, she thinks that Loras Tyrell must have died hating her. 

Podrick’s eyes grow large and then sad. For her, she realises. It brings a sympathetic flush of heat to the back of her eyes. She has to breathe deeply to dispel the tightness in her chest. 

“Sansa would support you, I know it, my lady. The queen too.” 

Brienne looks between them. The queen would not support her taking Jaime Lannister off south, leaving her armies behind them. She’s quite sure of that. Jaime knows it too. Jaime shakes his head. 

“I could… remain a guest here, for a while,” he says, clearly trying for disinterest. 

“The queen will leave soon,” says Brienne, “And I can’t make a decision until we can see what state Winterfell will be in when the armies move out. The Wildlings will be staying, and Jon Snow will be taking almost all the other men. We will not leave the Stark girls unprotected.”

Podrick accepts this easily and turns back to his tidying. Jaime is _looking_ at her again. Green eyes searching and impossible to meet for long. He’s keeping his bowl of stew steady on his lap with the gold hand, clever left handed fingers mindlessly finding and re-finding the balance of the spoon.

***

Sansa is locked in with the queen and accordingly not to be disturbed. Arya is waiting outside the door with the unsullied man. 

“Have you met Grey Worm?” she asks. 

Grey Worm says, “We have met.” 

Brienne is glad to belatedly learn his name. She introduces herself in turn. 

Arya takes her to the godswood to fight because the courtyard is now so crowded with wagons and men that it would be impossible to move there. Brienne would certainly not have invited anyone into the sept to practice swordplay, but then she has not visited the sept at all. Her concern must be apparent. 

Arya says, “The tree doesn’t mind; I checked with Bran.”

Brienne cannot tell if Arya is teasing her. 

They go at each other hard. She has only Oathkeeper with her, and after yesterday’s experimentation, Brienne longs for variety and a new test. She wants a mace. Perhaps Pod will lend her the axe. She wants to ride at targets on horseback. It’s been a long time since she thought of this skill of hers as being a source of any joy that wasn’t savage. It’s like breaking through the surface of warm water to rich sea air, to lose herself in movement against someone like Arya, particularly now there isn’t anyone watching. 

“I’d like to speak to you about what will happen after the queen’s armies leave,” Brienne says, slowing, still lazily trying to tap the flat of her blade to Arya’s side. 

The warm burn in her arm soothes the icy catch in the back of her throat. Arya darts easily out of range.

“You feel you should go south to Tarth. Sansa told me.” She sounds suddenly as young as she is. For a moment she’s gripping Needle too rigidly, and if Brienne can catch her, she’ll have her. “You are going to try to be a lady.” 

The stabbing embarrassment is instinctive. 

“I wouldn’t be anything different from what I already am,” she tells Arya. 

She wouldn’t be able to do it if she had to make herself different. It had been impossible even back when she hadn’t known she could beat Loras, or the Hound, or Jaime Lannister, or anyone else the world threw at her. Brienne examines Arya’s suspicious face. 

“Don’t let yourself feel you have to,” Arya says, “You’re the best fighter I’ve seen, and you’d be just as good without any Valyrian steel.” 

Without the miraculous power of Oathkeeper and Jaime’s sword they might very well both be dead and Podrick with them. Wights had fallen apart as soon as they touched them. Besides, it feels so good in her hands. Arya rushes in rather than away, and Brienne has to concentrate on turning Needle aside so she can break again. 

“Like you say, no one could make me do anything,” says Brienne, “and that’s not a boast.” 

Although perhaps it was. Brienne had enjoyed Jaime’s curling smile when she told him about that old man her father had one day uncertainly produced and the beating she had given him. 

“I could make you,” says Arya, stopping in place, and she flips her grip on the dagger to sheath it. She smiles. The Starks are mostly impossibly strange, and Brienne is profoundly grateful for Sansa who lives in the same world as Brienne. 

“Confident words,” Brienne says, flicking the point of her sword towards Arya’s lax hold on Needle, hoping to put an end to this part of the conversation. 

Arya draws her guard up once again, circling, still smiling pleasantly.

“I think that if I could convince you it was your duty, that it was honourable and would help innocents, I could make you do something you hated.” 

She sounds very confident. She sounds like she thinks she knows something. 

“You couldn’t,” Brienne says, “And I’m difficult to convince.” 

Arya’s stops moving and stops pretending to smile. Brienne lets the point of her sword dip into the snow. If what Arya says was true Brienne would be on Tarth now, married and torn down into little scraps that couldn’t help anyone. She would, she thinks sickly, know what had happened to her father and her people. 

“I won’t go until your sister has no more need of me. And you’ll be here to protect her.”

Arya’s face clears entirely, all her wide-eyed, warm youth stripped away.

“I think you want to go. Don’t dress it up. You made a vow to serve Sansa and now you’ll go back on it because it gets in the way of something you want.” 

Brienne shakily sheaths her sword. It’s too cold out here not to be moving. The minimal sweat she’d worked up is cooling in her gloves. She shivers. 

“Lords and knights go home to look after their people in times of peace.”

“Yes. I know who you think needs looking after,” says Arya. “Do you think he would push a child from a window for you?” 

Then she looks as though she regrets it, looking down to kick through the snow. Brienne waits while the crush of humiliation washes through her and away. Then she deliberately lets the silence grow, feeling strangely untethered without the expected, lingering embarrassment. 

“I’m never going to find out. Is this coming from Sansa?” 

Arya shakes her head. 

“I thought that you’d be staying. I thought you were like me. I hadn’t realised you might-.”

Brienne rubs her arms and shifts her feet in the snow. Arya doesn’t seem to be feeling the icy wind that’s clawing at every seam and fastening in Brienne’s leathers. Arya stands still and severe, although her nose has turned a reassuringly human pink in the wind.

“I love your sister,” says Brienne, trying to comfort, trying to reassure the both of them. 

“ _I_ love her,” Arya says and quirks her mouth into a brief, thin smile. “Isn’t it lucky for us both, that she doesn’t need anyone.” 

Then she holds out a hand to hush Brienne’s movement. She quirks her head about, pausing for a long moment. 

“Can you hear wolves?” she asks. “I can’t tell if they’re from the dreams or if they’re here.”

Brienne tries her best to listen past the wind in the heart tree’s red leaves. Arya’s face is empty. All of herself off wherever the wolves are perhaps. She looks so like Bran, but her eyes are brown and slitted in concentration. Brienne shakes her head. She can’t hear anything.

That afternoon, at Sansa’s request, she spends a few hours finding and speaking with every man assigned to the castle guard. It’s a strange job now. There’s a great hole in the walls and everyone out there is dead. She wends her way through the heaving passageways and up onto the castle walls. The cacophony is drowning the festering tension of the days after the battle. If it weren’t for the tents still pitched outside the walls, Brienne would think the armies ready to leave. The wagons in the courtyard are already being loaded. 

“You have perhaps three sensible men in twenty,” she tells Sansa, when she returns, trying not to huddle into the fire visibly. 

“As many as that,” says Sansa. 

“Let them all march south. Most are eager to do it.” Brienne lets her disapproval shine through. The men protecting Winterfell need to understand duty, not glory. They need to love the castle and its people. It would help if anyone of any intelligence could be found. “Pick better men,” says Brienne. Sansa smiles at her. 

“I will.”

***

She’s happy to return to her warm room. Pod and Jaime have kept the fire high. Tyrion is sitting on her bed, which is less pleasing but she supposes not wholly objectionable. 

“It’s to be tonight,” says Jaime, as soon as she has handed off her cloak to Pod, who takes it back to where he is settled by the fire. “They’re going to make a public declaration about Casterly Rock and the West at the evening meal.” 

Brienne perches on the desk, made awkward by Tyrion’s reappearance. Somebody, it turns out, has made the decision for him to leave Winterfell while Brienne wasn’t standing in the corner of the room. 

“We’re all meeting soon,” says Tyrion, “but I wanted to be the one to let you know.” 

He’s looking at Jaime somewhat hopefully. Brienne knows, from standing in the corner of a room while it was discussed, that the Lannister armies have all marched back to King’s Landing with no concern for protecting the countryside from the foreign invaders, and that according to Varys, Cersei has lost all control of the surviving houses beyond her immediate reach. She’d killed nearly every potential hostage that lived in the city when she burned the Sept and unsurprisingly houses have been reluctant to send any family to court since then. 

The plan Tyrion lays before them still sounds like an incredible risk. That the people of the Westerlands now have little love for Cersei doesn’t mean they’ll be accommodating to Tyrion, who is generally believed to have colluded with Sansa in the murder of King Joffrey and who is now recognisable as a supporter of the invading Targaryen Queen. 

“Doesn’t the Dragon Queen need all those men for her idiotic plan?” Jaime asks. 

Brienne looks sharply at Tyrion. She’s quite sure that it isn’t proper for Jaime to know anything about the queen’s plans. 

“That’s mostly my plan,” says Tyrion, a sardonic tilt to his mouth.

“Was this your idea too?” Jaime asks, listlessly slumping onto the bed beside him. 

“And Sansa’s. It was for you, it’s just we’ve expedited it to before they take King’s Landing,” says Tyrion, “so thanks so much for appearing to be the kind of idiot who would take a couple of hundred men off alone through the snow.”

“You’re the man who has agreed to it,” says Jaime, frowning. “Don’t blame me for this absurdity. Why don’t you wait?” 

Tyrion turns entirely into Jaime, distinctly panicked. 

“You wouldn’t have agreed to this? I’ve been spending time with the men. We’ll have the Iron Islanders. Sansa and Varys say the borderlands are in quiet chaos with all the Frey’s gone and that Cersei has turned away entirely from anything beyond her city walls.” Jaime doesn’t respond, pinching his lips unhappily. “Please, Jaime,” says Tyrion, “forget that she is on the other side of this for a moment. Would you make this march? I need to know.” 

Jaime turns to meet Brienne’s eyes frankly. Something in his face makes her stomach drop. He rolls his head on his neck and walks over to the fireplace, past Podrick, who catches her eyes warily. He plucks up a tightly rolled scroll, not entirely hidden behind a stash of candles. Brienne stares at the barely secret little object, chest tight. She lurches to her feet. 

“This is a letter from our aunt,” Jaime tells Tyrion.

“ _Jaime,_ who let you-.” 

Tyrion cuts himself off with a long sigh, turning a look of exasperation filled sympathy towards Brienne. Brienne stands there like the great towering fool Sansa warned her she would be. She doesn’t know why he’s kept it in here of all places. She hadn’t even noticed him leaving it there. She should have read it, she knows that. She meets Jaime’s apologetic look blankly. He doesn’t hold the letter out to her now, and she doesn’t ask him for it. He’s going to show it to Tyrion and that’s what is immediately necessary. 

Jaime hadn’t described his aunt or what he wanted to say to her. She’d just assumed when he wanted to write to her after the battle, that he wanted to pour out the same aching sentiments that she’d committed to paper and sent off to be discarded by whoever is now sitting in Evenfall. She thought he’d had the same impulse, to tell someone who had known the childish shape of you all of your triumph and fear and how much love you still had for the living world now you found yourself really in it once again. 

Tyrion says, “Sansa couldn’t find out much about our aunt’s plans. Varys reckons she and her husband are uninterested in power or Cersei’s approval and the last report was that they were holding a ship in Lannisport, waiting to see how everything falls out.” 

Brienne swallows the hurt that threatens to turn into anger. She hadn’t known Sansa had needed to know about any Lannister aunts.

“Does that letter say otherwise?” she asks. 

Jaime pinches his lips.

“She’s Tywin Lannister’s sister; she’s not entirely uninterested in power.”

“Give it to me,” Tyrion snaps and Jaime hands it over easily.

“The Rock knows and loves her. And that husband may be a useless lump, but he’s a surviving, locatable Frey,” says Tyrion, “He has a decent claim to the Twins.” 

Brienne’s heart turns over, that’s information Sansa should have had. Unlike Lannisport, the Twins are between them and King’s Landing. The twins are essential to their campaign. 

“Only until someone taking Casterly Rock sticks around long enough to pull the much lamented Edmure Tully and his child from imprisonment,” says Jaime.

“Yes, yes,” says Tyrion, pausing to glare at Jaime over the letter, “I’ve been appropriately shamed for that oversight. Thank you for apparently selectively handing them only information perfectly crafted to blindside and humiliate me entirely. Our dearest aunt wasn’t there to greet us when I last visited, and she has not seen fit to write to _me_.” 

He turns back to the letter. “This is excellent,” he says and then his face contorts. He puts his hand out to drag Jaime back down onto the bed next to him and says, viciously, “She’s a rotten, lying bitch.” 

Brienne recoils. Jaime had sounded so fond of the woman. Jaime folds a little into himself, defensive, and of course, Brienne realises, in a rising tide of frustration with her own aching heart, it must be about Cersei. Here - with two Lannisters ensconced in their own kingdom shaking family dramas, apparently having forgotten that she, the woman whose bed they’re sitting on is even in the room - she forces herself to hold the truth up to cold winter light. This is why she hadn’t wanted to see the letter. 

“Tyrion, don’t,” Jaime says, softly, “It might not have been a lie.” 

Tyrion laughs, loud and sharp.

“I’m sorry,” says Tyrion sobering as Jaime’s face tightens, “but don’t lie to yourself in her stead, for fuck’s sake, Jaime.” Jaime stares blankly into nothing. “This is the end of it,” says Tyrion, brandishing the letter at him. “This is good news, doubly. Our aunt will all but give us the Rock, and you’re free. Really free, you hear me.” 

“I wasn’t trapped,” says Jaime, still quiet but disdainful now too, “Yes, it’s devious but she-.” He pauses, heaves out a great breath and changes tack, hissing, “It doesn’t matter if I’m free. You’re all so bloody pleased now she’s doomed herself to die. As terrible as she’s become, it’s still indecent and I-.” 

Tyrion stands up abruptly, and Jaime cuts himself off. 

“She was always this terrible to me. It’s only now she has enough power to torture everyone else,” says Tyrion sharply. Jaime blanches. All the anger drains from Tyrion. “No one is pleased about any of this, Jaime. She is my family too,” he breathes exhaustedly. He rolls the letter up and sticks it up his sleeve. “Your blessed maid has no wine here, and this is a conversation only to be had when dead drunk or nearly dead. I need to show this to the queen, who should have seen it as soon as it came” - Jaime flinches minutely, and Brienne clenches her jaw - “and to Sansa. Jon too, I suppose.” Then Tyrion softens and says to Jaime affectionately, “Try to be less of a fool. I’ll do my best to disguise how long you’ve had this. I need your help writing to dear Aunt Genna. I doubt she planned to make this offer to me.” 

He nods to Brienne - how charming of him to have remembered that she, the blessed maid, is still in the room - and turns towards the door.

Jaime calls after him, “Tyrion, when do you leave?”

“Tomorrow. I’ll ask them to send riders with my aunt’s reply.”

“So soon,” says Podrick, surprise on his face.

“They were all preparing to march anyway.” 

Jaime huffs at that.

“They were really going to march those men to King’s Landing?” 

She’d had the same doubts. She wonders who else was thinking it and not saying what needed to be said. What are they all doing in these closed meetings? She’s glad for those grey-faced southern soldiers in Sansa’s office. At least some of them are going home.

“You really think that plan is any stupider than this new venture?” Tyrion asks, and he still sounds leading, despite his earlier confidence, like he really wants Jaime’s reassurance. 

“I’ll help you with anything you want,” says Jaime, he gestures resignedly at Tyrion where he has secreted the letter, “Let that be my commitment to this. I’ll do anything in my very limited means for you to get to the Rock safely.”

Tyrion smiles at him, apparently completely satisfied. 

“I love you too,” he says. 

Jaime stands when the door closes behind Tyrion and draws himself neatly together like a soldier squaring up to face a commanding officer. Brienne sits heavily back on the desk. She doesn’t want to have this conversation at all. Certainly not like this. Frustration sits heavy in her chest. Her cowardice almost lost Sansa information she needed. She hadn’t known Sansa needed the information. If Jaime had just told her. 

“I can tell you what was in the letter,” Jaime says, looking calmly and directly into her eyes, “or you can ask Sansa for it now, I suppose.” 

“There was something in it you didn’t want me to see? Besides your aunt and uncle’s apparent political significance?” 

“He’s hardly my _uncle,_ ” says Jaime with apparent disgust. "My uncle was in that sept."

As if she cares. She wonders if he would ever have told them if Tyrion’s safety hadn’t so clearly been impacted by keeping it a secret. Jaime waits until she meets his eyes again. 

“She only offered me support, which I was in no position to accept. There’s a part of the letter that was really about family but I’m happy to-.” 

“Then I won’t ask,” Brienne cuts him off. 

The gratitude in his face is no longer the sweetness it was in the maester’s tower during those blurry hours after the battle. There’s no reason for her to know any of it now that Tyrion has the letter. It would just be an exercise in wielding a power she doesn’t want. 

“The whole army must be less than a week from leaving,” she says, “we don’t have time for you to sit on information that could keep people alive.” 

He says tiredly, “Northern people, you mean. It was enough of a betrayal that I wrote to my aunt in the first place.” A betrayal of which queen, Brienne isn’t sure. “They will march straight past the Westerlands and never worry about the rear of their armies. I am sorry for keeping it from you, Brienne, but they have dragons. My sister has lost this war before it has even begun. I wrote that letter, and she lost more of her family and more of her kingdoms. You can’t ask me to joyously flaunt her isolation to all her enemies so that everyone can sing and celebrate her coming death.”

“No one is singing,” says Brienne. 

She had known that he couldn’t be relied on to work against Cersei. It had taken him a year and the excuse of an army of dead men for him to break loyalty to Cersei after the Sept. They don’t have time for that kind of endless inaction ended only by crisis. She’s been dreaming of an afterwards, but she thought she’d had her eyes open. If she’d asked for that letter, he’d have handed it over as soon as it came. He’d offered it to her more than once, passing on the responsibility. She doesn’t want to be cast as a benevolent tyrant. 

“Fuck loyalty?” he says, quietly and sardonically. Brienne looks at him sharply, abruptly uncomfortable in front of Pod. That was situational, and that context has blown away on the wind. But Jaime continues casually, louder, “and fuck propriety. What next?”

“You need to not hide your treason in my room,” she says. Jaime’s jaw jumps, and he blinks at her as if the magnitude of it all hadn’t occurred to him.

“It was just… family,” he says, a little helplessly.

“No,” says Brienne, “I don’t want to know every grubby little Lannister secret. I need you not to make me into a fool.” He stares at her, stricken. She marches past him, throwing back a command to, “Stay here.” 

She looks briefly at Podrick, who has been silent this whole time, sat still and sad mouthed by the fire. She pulls the door firmly closed behind her. 

She heads for the smithy. Tyrion and all the other great houses will be gathering. There are a small number who always sit in on these councils, often after Sansa has let Brienne go for the evening. She needs to find Gendry. He’s Lord of Storm’s End - they created him - and the council should reflect that. Her house is sworn to his; she must ensure that they treat him with the appropriate respect.

***

Gendry comes immediately when she tells him he must. She gives him all the information she has and can safely repeat aloud in the busy courtyards and corridors that lead them to Sansa. The castle is bustling with men and women darting around and preparing to leave, and there is no privacy to be had in the cramped grey walls. Not when they are this pressed for time.

Grey Worm nods at her greeting and allows her to knock without comment. They push into the study to find Tyrion who looks up at her in consternation, with the assembled greatness of the Queen, Sansa, Jon, Royce, Varys, and Ser Davos, now wearing the sigil of hand on his jerkin. Melisandre stands against the far wall.

“Your grace, my lady, I’ve brought Gendry Baratheon,” says Brienne awkwardly, into the sudden silence, trying to address both women at once, “He’s Lord Paramount of the Stormlands,” she adds as justification.

Gendry’s forearms are bare under his cloak and covered in grease and soot. Lord Royce chokes a startled noise into the silence, and Brienne turns to stare at the man, too incredulous to feel the familiar creep of embarrassment. How dare he. 

“We should have sent for you, my lord,” says Sansa smoothly, crooking an eyebrow at Brienne, “Sit down. Both of you,” she adds casually as if Tarth has as much right to be here as the representatives of the North, Vale, Stormlands, Westerlands and she supposes the Riverlands in Sansa and Jon too, in their uncle’s stead. 

Daenerys twitches her face into a bright smile. 

“Yes, I have been gratified to hear that Ser Brienne and,” she hesitates, blinking disdainfully, “Jaime, have been helping my new cousin in his duties. Brienne, Cousin, join us,” she says as though Sansa had not already invited them. 

Sansa’s face is very carefully blank, but Brienne thinks she can see a glint of amusement. The firelight glints in the marble eyes of the wolf on her shoulder. Sat around the table, and not stood by the door, Brienne quickly begins to feel much more like a household knight. She’d felt instantly vindicated when Renly had installed her on his Rainbow Guard. She'd felt similarly confident in her abilities when she’d been given command here at Winterfell. She’d been ready. Keeping up with a council like this feels like it might take practice. There are too many moving parts for which she doesn’t have context. Everyone here but Gendry is practiced at quick and decisive decisions made on behalf of vast swathes of human life. They’ll march ten thousand men here, five thousand there. They’ll fly dragons over this minor city, they’ll avoid that river. These are obviously well trod arguments and plans.

Brienne breathes through her panic and then listens carefully. Sansa seems to have given up on disputing the necessity of them going. Jon defers to Daenerys in a way that feels to Brienne to be pointed and performative. Tyrion is quiet, and Brienne is distinctly aware of the holes in his leather jerkin where the hand’s sigil once hung. Lord Royce is as much as a feature as Brienne herself, seemingly there only to sit beside Sansa. 

“You think the city will just allow itself to be sacked?” says Gendry, into a pause in Jon and Davos’s deliberation about stationing garrisons in the Crownlands, with their exact plan for getting through any of the walls of King’s Landing worryingly elided. Brienne thinks of Jaime saying, _they have dragons._ She’s glad Tarth is an island. Everyone turns to stare at Gendry. He swallows creakingly but continues, “Growing up in Flee Bottom people used to tell tales of what they did when the Lannisters rode in, and that army was fresh. It’s a hard city.” 

“I’ve found that great masses of people are often less brave than they think themselves to be as individuals,” says Daenerys, untroubled, “and I am their rightful queen overthrowing a tyrant. Once they see they have no reason to fear me, they will not resist us.” 

Everyone around the table pauses significantly. Perhaps this is why they were not mentioning it. Brienne turns to frown at Sansa who is entirely relaxed her cheek tilted delicately against the fur of the wolf.

Davos grumbles his way into speech. 

“Gendry, er, excuse me, my lord, those tales of what men did when Tywin Lannister rode in are mostly just tall tavern tales. But civilian resistance may come later, I believe, particularly if we mismanage the initial entry or resort to starving the city out.” 

It sounds pointed. There is a point Davos wants to make, and he’s not making it. It frustrates her. The pin indicating his position as hand sits dull on his chest, distorting his jerkin and he should say what he thinks. There is tension in Daenerys’s face too. 

“How-,” Brienne looks to Sansa who tips her head, encouraging. Brienne gathers herself. “Then how do you plan to gain entry?” 

Davos looks shiftily to Jon, saying, “My lady, we plan for a siege and hope for a quick surrender. There are weak points in their defences, too, if you know the city well, which I do.” 

“Thank you, ser,” she says, not bothering to disguise the doubt in her voice. 

Besides Davos, Varys crosses his legs and places his hands in his lap. Brienne flicks a startled glance at him. There is something particularly loud about the quiet action, although she could not say why. 

“Varys,” says Daenerys loudly, “you disapprove of _all_ our strategies.” There is another alarmed pause. Jon sits up. Varys uncrosses his legs. “You do,” Daenerys says, “You talk behind my back about how much you disapprove.”

Sansa is predator still next to Brienne. Missandei moves forwards to put her hands on the back of the queen’s chair. That information came from Sansa via Brienne, she realises with sick certainty. Their passing information led directly to this confrontation. 

“But now you only sigh and sulk,” says Daenerys. “What would you do differently, Varys? I know you are a great military commander with far more experience than I.”

Varys stares back at her. Then he turns, very deliberately to Davos. Daenerys stops affecting remove and sits forward, a neat mirror to Jon’s alert posture.

“Davos?” she asks, her mouth tight around the name. Davos looks nothing short of terrified. He stutters and blusters. 

“Your grace,” interrupts Tyrion, “We have been talking about smuggling and Targaryen tunnels.” 

The queen listens for barely a moment. Then she sends Brienne to fetch Grey Worm into the room.

***

Jaime starts to his feet, looking drained and desperately worried when she returns. Podrick is still sitting in the chair by the fire. She’d heard the low murmur of their voices from the stairwell. 

“They barely spent a moment on the provenance of the letter,” she reassures him immediately. “Sansa is pleased.” 

Truthfully, Tyrion had framed the news of a new ally in such a way that the already well-contented assembly had hardly questioned how he had come by the news. He’ll tell Sansa, of course, or Brienne will do it. 

“They don’t hold you responsible?” he says, “You were gone so long and I thought-. I wanted to come, but I thought I’d only make it worse it worse for you if they saw I couldn’t obey a simple order to stay put.”

She lets Jaime take her cloak and sword. The warm air in the room feeds the glow of accomplishment rising in her belly. 

“I sat with them as they planned with the queen,” Brienne tells them. 

“With all the great houses?” asks Podrick, looking suitably impressed. 

“I thought the Stormlands had a right to be there. I went with Gendry, as a representative of the vassal houses, to advise and support him,” which is what she’d planned to say if anyone tried to make her leave him there alone. 

Her father hadn’t raised her to this kind of politics. She learned to govern a small island that could not raise an army. She was taught to fight alone, not pressed hot and suffocating in a massive formation or with the expectation of anyone being by her side. Although she can’t pretend that she’ll enjoy the politics, perhaps she can change after all, if she needs to. She can learn.

Jaime leans back on the edge of the desk, smiling at her quietly. He was raised to govern one of the seven kingdoms and command a King’s armies. He’s having it all stripped away from him tonight. Technically it’s already gone, technically he refused it all anyway, but none of that means anything in the absence of witnesses and action. She is heir to little Tarth, but it’s possible none of Tarth even knows she is alive. There are only a few hundred men from the west in Winterfell to learn that their warden is officially some different Lannister once again. 

She comes to stand in front of Jaime. He holds her eyes steadily. He’s not scrambling to stand to attention anymore, remaining in his exhausted slump against the desk. 

She says, “You were in command of armies nearly as large as this one. How would you move them south?” Jaime exhales slowly and looks away. He taps the gold hand against the desk; a hollow thud. She thinks perhaps it will still be too much. She doesn’t think she means it as a test. “If they invited you to push around those wooden blocks on their map of Westeros, where would you draw the battle lines?”

She’s just become accustomed to talking to him or Podrick about almost everything. She wants to know what he thinks. 

“I wouldn’t,” he says quietly, “Set up a new court at Highgarden or Harrenhal. Let King’s Landing stew in its own decay and get on with ruling. Why throw lives and precious months of early winter weather away on what is now a hostage city held by sellswords, more than it is a seat of power.” Brienne blinks at him, surprised. That doesn’t sound like Cersei Lannister’s brother angling to have her left alone. That sounds like real advice. She frowns, considering. 

“Someone will have suggested it,” Jaime says, “Don’t put yourself in her path. Especially not with advice taken from me.” Brienne waits for him to look up at her again. 

“What if I want King’s Landing safe? What if I want it secure before winter comes for all its people?”

“I still wouldn’t do this,” he says, setting his face. “Cersei is the only thing holding the sellswords and the Lannister armies to the city, and the city from you. There’s no successor. No one to take up her madness. Use the men you have. Ask Davos about the currents and Varys about his tunnels. Tywin Lannister would tell you that you need a few well trained men, not too few exhausted soldiers, far from home and fighting through march fractures. She won’t be intimidated into surrender by a couple of apparently undersized dragons.” He clears his face. “She’ll mean to die on that throne. Last time… but they could… capture her, or not, I suppose. Gods knows none of us has much to bargain with.” 

Brienne should feel victorious - it may be couched as Tywin Lannister’s advice, but it’s Jaime’s. It’s not as ugly as it was in the council meeting to hear Tyrion map out how they could kill his sister. He’d looked utterly calm as well.

“That’s very nearly what they have decided.”

Jaime puts a hand over his eyes. She watches his mouth pull long and thin and the complete stillness of his chest. She reaches out cautiously towards his face. 

After a moment Pod starts shifting by the fire. Jaime drops his hand to take hold of hers and pull it away from his face. His eyes are dry. There’s starburst red blood fracturing under the surface in the inner corner of one of them. She drops his fingers from hers and steps back, looking to Pod. He’s got his eyebrows up, looking down at his boots, half twisted away from them on the chair towards the fire.

“Podrick,” says Jaime, “Let’s visit the baths and then find Lord Tyrion. We should write this letter as soon as possible.”

Brienne has the room to herself. It’s strange, but not unpleasant. She goes to the chest and opens it. Alongside her and Pod’s sparse collection of carefully sorted possessions, there is now a little bundle of material. Something in there is pink, once red, presumably, and washed out over time. Everything else is dark and practical. She shuts the chest, not sure what she had been looking for. 

She imagines the boat they could take. She imagines the skies are still summer blue over Tarth. She imagines her father, alive after all, and the long, dark corridor she used to drill in when the rain blew in off the sea. 

When they collect him for his lesson, Gendry eyes Jaime’s shortened, neatened beard and the fairly clean job Pod has made of the hair at his nape. 

“Are you marching south then?” he asks, indicating his own stubbled chin. 

“If you were the queen - or even if you were, my lord, imagine this, the Lord of Storm’s End and her sworn man - would you trust me to march south?”

Gendry looks like he’s stepped out and found the sea floor gone beneath his advancing foot.

“No,” he says at last, with reasonable confidence. Jaime claps him on the back with his gold hand.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Brienne, your skills as a jailor have atrophied severely in the time since we first met.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I deleted the note on chapter one about nearly having this final part ready to go out of embarrassment, because while that felt true at the time, it turned out to be a horrible lie. Anyway, I don't know if you guys have heard, but everything is cancelled in a very literal sense. So. I mysteriously had some free time over the last few weeks to re-write. Sorry for any mistakes I haven’t caught. It's longer than the previous draft, but it has more Jaime and less politics. I'm looking forward to being able to read fic in this fandom, now I'm not trying to keep this version of them straight(ha?) in my head.
> 
> Warnings: Same as before. Additionally everyone is emotionally stunted, even after they manage to sleep with each other, but they are at least trying very hard (most of the time).

Jaime pokes at the newly exposed skin behind his jaw, “I thought to look presentable for tonight, but now my neck just feels cold.” At least this complaint makes sense, unlike the muttering about lemon juice.

Gendry has hooked a bite of inky triumph and written _Baratheon_ under their careful tutelage. He’s celebrating by examining their swords. He’s paused, with the smithy still smeared on his face and incalculable wealth in his hands. Brienne's feet are stretched out towards the dancing fire and Jaime is slumped against the foot of the bed beside her. She's grown quite comfortable with holding these lessons on the floor. She's comfortable.

“Well,” says Pod, scrubbing at his eyes, “that’s the mending done. I don’t know what I’ll do now.” He's been sitting in the chair, shuffled close to the light of the fire, and now he wanders over to place Brienne’s spare and most disgraceful shirt back in their chest.

Gendry tips the blades in the light. He whistles appreciatively. He’s too old to learn to joust, but perhaps one day he could fight for sport with the other young lords. 

“You fight with a hammer?” says Pod.

“Like my father,” Gendry says, his voice thick with pride, “Everyone says I look like him.” Brienne rotates only her eyes towards Jaime. Jaime blinks at her slowly. Gendry asks her, “You knew him?" Behind her Pod climbs onto the bed and lies down. Gendry catches the motion, looks between the three of them and then flushes, awkwardly clearing his throat. 

“Very little, my lord,” she tells him, sorry to see his bright face fall. “Even my father rarely travelled to Storm’s End. But I served Renly during the war of the five kings. I was one of his Kingsguard.” 

“You said, Rainbow Guard, before,” says Jaime quietly.

“Rainbow Guard,” Brienne agrees.

“Did you like him much?” says Gendry, and he turns back to examining Oathkeeper, so she doesn’t have to worry about keeping her face clear while she decides how to answer that. Jaime’s amusement is hot on her heating cheek. 

“Was he any good at having a Rainbow Guard?” Jaime prompts, which is a much easier question to answer. He bumps her with his elbow.

“Yes,” she says and Gendry turns to narrow his eyes at Jaime. “He was-.” She stumbles. Gendry gives up on the swords, watching her patiently. He does have Renly’s bright interest in his eyes. “Stannis killed him,” she says, because as the memories have faded, that is what she thinks about when she remembers Renly; the last thing that she did for him “It was Stannis in the shape of the red woman’s magic.” Gendry nods. Then he puts down the swords and shuffles back further to put his back against the wall of hot air coming off the fire. 

“Don’t you wish there was more wine?”

Brienne says briskly, “He was an honourable man. His people loved him. It was my pleasure to serve him.” Gendry nods some more, looking down at his boots. That’s not a full song and it’s not the shape of a person you can love. Gendry should love him. “He was gentle,” she says, slower, “and brave. Clever when he wanted to be. Not always serious when he needed to be. He was only ever passable with a sword.” Jaime abruptly covers his mouth with a gloved hand. Brienne turns to narrow her eyes at him. That’s part of the story. 

“Stannis seemed a miserable old tosser,” Gendry says, with a pantomimed type of humour. Jaime keeps his hand over his mouth. Gendry balls his fingers into fists and then flexes them wide. “They hardly sound like they could have been brothers.” Gendry’s eyes turn towards Jaime and hold. Jaime sighs. 

“Consider whether this is something you particularly want to hear about from me, my lord,” says Jaime. 

“You’re here aren’t you,” says Gendry. 

“Fine,” Jaime says. “They shared a sickness in wanting to be king. That’s more than they had in common with your father.” Gendry’s hands stop moving.

“My father-,” Gendry says, voice lilting cautiously upwards. 

Jaime crosses his ankles and situates himself even more casually against the foot of the bed, still close enough that Brienne could dig him with an elbow in return.

“-always wished there was more wine,” says Jaime. Gendry’s face folds like a tent with it’s pole knocked out. Brienne can’t feel any movement from Jaime beside her. She watches Gendry consciously fight against the drowning weight of closely watched anger. She thinks Gendry had begun to like Jaime, before this. 

“That bad?” Gendry asks. Speaking lightly looks effort-full. 

“Well, he didn’t like me much either,” Jaime concedes. Gendry fixes his eyes very deliberately on Jaime. 

He says, “We had peace while he was King. That’s not nothing.” That shuts Jaime up pretty effectively. He just blinks back at Gendry with a perfectly pleasant expression painted over his face. Gendry’s scowl deepens the longer he looks back. “Everyone says you and your sister killed him,” says Gendry, all in a rush, “because of your-.” He looks at Brienne and up where Pod must be lying and purses his lips. Brienne supposes she appreciates the consideration. Jaime blows a dismissive little puff of air, answering quickly, apparently prepared. 

“How? Did we take on the shape of a boar? Conjure it from our wishing? Are you attributing to us the powers of that red woman?” He twitches his hand in his lap. His eyes flicker briefly to Brienne. “Did we drive him to drink?”

“But she did kill him,” says Brienne, to shut him up. 

“Well, not _directly,_ ” says Jaime, “and you must understand that he really was quite unbearable to live with. _Particularly_ as his wife. Robert himself wouldn’t have disputed that.” 

Gendry, tight faced and pale says, “That’s no bloody reason to ruin it for everybody else! When you’re little you think, _Oh, they must know what they’re doing,_ with all the titles and the reading and writing to each other, but you’re all incompetent! Everyone knows it. No one will trust any of you lot - any of _us_ \- after all this shit.” He sets his jaw. 

“I can’t dispute that,” says Jaime. “It does make one wish that here was more wine. How different is a good stupor from peace.” Brienne thinks thats really quite enough of that. 

“Not everyone is incompetent,” says Brienne. Gendry looks at her dolefully, but there is a flicker of interest in there. “Lord Stark is remembered with love by his people and his family. My father was-.” Brienne swallows sparks from the fire. “My father _is_ very well respected.” Jaime is already talking again.

“Lord Stark knew to stay out of it,” he says. “Your father knew to stay out of it. When Stark allowed himself to be dragged to court, he immediately fell over his inflated sense of self importance and onto the-.”

“Sansa says that he was trying to be decent!” Brienne interrupts, aware that she is speaking more loudly than his proximity merits. “She thinks he wanted you sister to have a chance to do the right thing.” Jaime turns both his hands up.

 _”Incompetent,”_ he says, like he’s won a game. Gendry is watching Jaime narrowly. Brienne leans in to pull his attention. 

“Acting with honour — allowing others the chance to behave with honour — Gendry,” Brienne says, “my lord, all we can do is try.” 

“Yes,” Gendry says. “I can see that. But that’s only any good so long as all the other idiots with great fuck off armies - excuse me, mi’lady, my lady.” He articulates the last carefully. Breinne watches frustration bloom across his face - “My lady. It’s only that no one has explained what I’m expected to do if any of those ravens come back. Because if they write back, it’s not just me any more, is it? The things we promised them-. If I trip over my own cock - pardon me. It’s just, it’s more trouble to be given a _wife_ than a kingdom.” Gendry wipes at his upper lip. “No one made me swear anything.” Brienne gathers herself. She has one of her father’s favourite musings prepared for presentation. 

“It’s the same thing as always but on a grander scale,” says Brienne, “you look after your people wherever it is within your power to do so. You try to be brave, to give them justice and set dutifully about whatever needs to be done. It’s just service. You hope that the crown is just and seeks to serve you in turn.” Gendry seems caught off guard by that.

“Well, I can hope,” he says. He blows a long stream of air out through his mouth. “She seems-. She has been very kind to me.” Jaime sits forward and mirrors her crossed legs. It presses their knees together again. 

“Have you ever heard the little speech that is given in response to a knight swearing service?”

“No,” says Gendry. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard how to make a slake tub or set a forge fire.” Jaime rolls his eyes.

“They swear, in exchange for service, to give you a place by their side, in their home and at their table, and they swear not to ask of you anything that will bring you to disgrace.”

“Dishonour,” says Brienne. “Nothing that will bring dishonour.”

“Right,” says Gendry, “so if these lords and ladies write back and don’t laugh me out of Storm’s End once they see me, I might need to know these words as well as all the others?” He passes his fingers over the stained skin under his eyes. “Will I have to know how to write them down?”

“It’s only spoken,” says Jaime. “But it gets forgotten. I’m trying to say-. The whole thing is full of traps, but the basic structure of it — if a person must give something of themselves to you, then you owe them a part of yourself in turn. That’s… well.”

“Obvious,” says Gendry. Jaime pivots, still tipped forwards, to try and pass the whole thing back off to Brienne. “Trouble is,” Gendry says, “There’s quite a lot of people in the Stormlands.”

Jaime says, “And that’s why I never wanted much to do with the whole thing. Very demanding. Almost unreasonable. Takes a certain type of person.” 

“Maybe your sister got to them and there’s less of them that needs bits of me now,” says Gendry. Then he looks at Brienne. “Sorry,” he says. “That’s not very funny, is it?” Brienne knows he didn’t mean any harm by it. She tries to look encouraging.

“You’re not a pond that will dry up,” she says, now in unrehearsed territory. “Time is an issue. You have to hear all these petitions that go on and on, but you don’t run out of…” She can’t quite think of the word for it. _Energy. That feeling of obligation. The desire to do your duty well._

“Devotion,” says Pod, from the bed. 

Gendry squints, like he’s thinking about it very hard. Jaime thumps his head back against the wood at his back. 

“That makes some sense. Maybe the queen should make Podrick Lord of somewhere,” says Gendry. 

“No,” says Pod. “I’d only like to be a knight.” Gendry perks up, willing to be distracted.

“Oh, I wouldn’t have minded that,” he says. “I was going to-.” He turns back to Jaime. “You know, I was going to take revenge on your family. It’s been a bit underwhelming running into you and your brother all over the place.”

Brienne sizes him up instinctively. She wants to say, _you can’t take revenge, he’s going to be yours,_ but maybe then he will think of it as justice, and only a change in key. 

“Well,” says Jaime, “I am sorry for you father’s reckless approach to hunting and drinking.”

Brienne says, “Gods sakes.” 

But Jaime is already frowning: “Look-.”

“What about for almost killing me?” interrupts Gendry. Jaime sits forward.

“When?” He says, “You could have brought it up before now. We’ve been perfectly civil for days.”

Gendry puffs up, “You don’t-? When your lot came to kill all my father’s bastards,” says Gendry. ‘After he was dead. You Lannisters hunted me before I even knew why.” 

“Oh,” Jaime says, “I see.” Brienne wipes her hands on her knees, agonised. _He’d run off and wasn’t in the city._ There’s always some mitigation she wants to offer. Beside her, Jaime rearranges his hands on his knees a few times before straightening. “Yes, I can apologise for that,” he says, still sounding a little flippant. “Look, I really do like to think that if I’d-.” He cuts himself off. “But I can’t deny what was done. I do apologise then. It was an awful thing in a long line of fucking awful things.” 

Brienne stares at him. Pod shifts noisily on the bed, sitting up, Brienne thinks. Gendry starts bobbing his head slightly and then intensifies the movement. 

“Well, it’s not even your name anymore, after tonight,” says Gendry, a little cruel and red cheeked with it. “So I suppose that’s going to have to be alright. Or, I mean, it will be alright.” He’s consciously softening his voice. Brienne watches him with interest. Tension seems to blow out of him with a few gentle gusts. “You’ve been more than decent to me.”

“Right,” says Jaime. “Wonderful.” He leans back against the bed and thunks his head against it again softly. Brienne widens her eyes at him, trying to catch his attention. “Thank you,” he says, and he’s not even gritting his teeth. “Thank you, my lord.” Gendry recoils. 

“Should we-” says Pod.

“I wasn’t actually in the city anymore,” says Jaime, to Brienne, eyes intent until she nods. Then he looks away. “I’d like to think they wouldn’t have felt they needed to do it if I was there. I’d like to think that.” 

“-go?” says Pod. “Should we go?”

“Yes,” says Jaime, getting up. “Can’t skip this one really.” 

“Wait,” says Gendry, “No one has anything to say to me about my father, that isn’t about his drinking habits?” He looks desperate. The parts of Renly Brienne won’t share are all the ways in which he was loved. 

“Eddard Stark loved Robert Baratheon,” says Brienne, “and Eddard Stark made Lady Sansa and Lady Arya.” Jaime wanders over to put his sword back over the desk. Brienne buckles hers back around her waist. 

Jaime says, “During his war, his men loved him to distraction. And he had enough sense to like the late Catelyn Stark. There. That will have to be enough for now. There will be many that knew him before King’s Landing and you’ll find them when you go south.”

***

The queen sits at the centre of the high table looking down over the gathered men. The hall is just as crowded as ever, but now, at the end of one of the long tables, there is a cluster of quiet, grim-faced Dothraki, too few to be truly representative of even the slight number still camped outside the walls. Perhaps Jon was right, and they hadn’t wanted to come. There is a larger group of unsullied men, all in their inadequately warm gear, sitting mostly straight-backed but similarly quiet at the head of the same long table. Between them, a group consisting mainly of Bear Islanders and Night’s Watchmen is riotously falling over their meals. They are at least pretending that they have noticed nothing unusual about their new neighbours. Some more of the westerosi must have been shuffled out to eat in the guards hall and passageways to make room, but Brienne couldn’t say who is absent. 

Tyrion sits up at the high table in Jon’s usual place. Jon is nowhere to be seen and Arya is similarly absent, but that is not unusual. Tyrion meets Brienne’s eyes and raises a glass to her, she nods Jaime towards him, and Jaime pivots quickly on his bench, momentarily betraying his tension before he sees Tyrion’s raised glass. He turns back to her, gives her a reassuring grin and goes back to his meal, returning to the pretence of ease. Brienne’s stomach turns on his behalf. 

Gendry is sat next to her. Samwell Tarly and the woman, Gilly, have joined them.

Tarly says, “They made us come. I’m Lord Tarly now, and they noticed I’d been having meals brought to me in the tower.” He says it like he wants them to laugh at him, or with him, Brienne isn’t sure. Gilly meanwhile looks delighted by all the noise and movement around her. Or maybe she’s just pleased to be away from the child for a moment. She’s sitting next to Pod with her back to the majority of the hall, and she cranes around between bites of food to watch the Dothraki, Bran, the queen and a scuffle that breaks out among some of the younger northern gentry. Brienne thinks they should have been the ones demoted to eating in the guards’ hall or the corridors. 

When the clatter of plates dies down enough that Brienne can hear the wind beating the castle walls, the queen stands, and Jaime turns again, clearly quite ready to get on with it all. 

“Tomorrow the first of us to march south will leave to reclaim Casterly Rock and the Westerlands,” she announces. There is no shout of triumph as there would have been if Jon Snow had said it, but there is an excited murmur. The queen looks out over all of them, seemingly untroubled by the lack of response. “I offer to you all, my people, a motion;” -Brienne can see Tyrion jerk up at the table - “an attainder of Jaime Lannister, named Warden of the West and Lord of Casterly Rock by his birthright and again by his sister, the tyrant who sits on my throne. I would denounce him and strip from him his rank and titles, for the crime of breaking his sacred oaths and killing his king, my father. What do you say?” Jaime had stood as soon as she said his name. Brienne can’t see his face, just the relaxed hand held behind his back and that almost every eye in the room is now turning towards him.

“Yes,” shouts one voice from the back of the room, cracked with age, and men stamp their feet under the shouts that come up from the rest of the room. It’s more restrained than Brienne might have expected if she had known it would be a public choice, but it’s only as loud as it is quick. She mouths her own agreement almost silently, wishing it wasn’t to his back. 

The queen turns to him, eyes bright and intent, even from so far away. “Jaime Lannister, I strip from you and any of your descendants, the Lannister name, the west and all attendant lands, titles and holdings. I offer you mercy and leave you with your life.” She keeps her eyes on him for a little longer. Brienne thinks the queen hoped to see him humiliated. Hurt by this. He gives her a little bow from the neck. Brienne can not tell if the queen is disappointed. 

The queen turns back to the hall. “My father forgot his love and his duty to his people. I will not. I offer all these confiscated titles to my loyal servant, Tyrion Lannister and charge him with the task of returning to Casterly Rock, which he has already conquered for me by force. With Winterfell and the Rock looking to a true queen, we will, at last, have the beginnings of our peace. I will drink to our soldier’s success and to our coming victories. Join me.” 

She raises her glass, Sansa stands to raise her own - she get the kind of response that Jon might hope for. Brienne watches the queen inhale it all, tilting her chin up to disguise the curl of her mouth. Men are always happy to drink, and Brienne thinks it wise to have buried Tyrion Lannister’s name in the middle of that speech. Jaime gives the perfunctory twitch of an inclined neck to Tyrion who nods back at him, hand on his chest, and then he turns to sit down at the table. 

The hall around them quickly goes back to its usual hubbub. No one here is particularly interested in Lannisters. Their little group watches him covertly. Jaime smiles very brightly at Brienne and bounces his spoon just above the rim of his empty plate. 

“Where are you lord of?” says Gilly to Gendry who is staring up at the high table. 

Gendry turns back, blinking, and casts a guilty look at Jaime.

“Storm’s End, but only just recently, honestly,” says Gendry, “so it’s all a bit-. Well. Before that I was a blacksmith, and mostly I’m a blacksmith still.”

“Are you a Baratheon?” Gilly says, “I’ve read all about the Stormlands, but nothing about being a blacksmith. Someone should think to write a book about that.” 

“I have been learning to read and write,” Gendry says, “But only for two days, so you might have to wait a little while for a book.” 

“There are plenty of books on smithing,” says Tarly. Brienne grits her teeth. Jaime twitches his head up towards him, narrows his eyes consideringly and then flicks an amused look at Brienne. Tarly stammers. 

“By blacksmiths?” says Gendry, doubtfully.

“My lord, your cousin - Shireen - she taught Gilly to read. She taught the Queen’s Hand, Ser Davos too,” - this does cause Gendry to brighten - “You’ll be writing anything you want in no time,” he says, very earnestly. 

“Oh,” says Gendry, “she-.” He comes to an abrupt halt, staring down at the table furiously. He puts one elbow up on the table. He puts it back down, his hands in fists. 

“She was so lovely to me,” says Gilly, gently, “and I’d like to help, if there’s any way I can. There’s not much for me to do up in that tower that concerns people not on a page. It would be good to pass on her lessons to her family.” 

Brienne looks at Jaime. For the first time tonight, his shoulders are drooping. A gangly young woman with red braids comes by to bash a jug of water down between them. Pod flinches uncharacteristically so Brienne scowls after her. Jaime pours himself more water. There isn’t any more wine this evening. Brienne looks about and can’t see the rodent faced spy anywhere. 

“When I can spare the time…” says Gendry.

“It sounds like an excellent idea,” Jaime says, and he tops up Gendry’s cup as well. He waves the jug vaguely at the rest of the table, waiting for someone to proffer a glass. 

“My lord?” he says, and Tarly flushes. 

“Oh I’m no longer used to all this,” he says. “Sam, all of you, please call me Sam.” Jaime puts the jug heavily back down. Brienne looks up at Sansa, who is still turned attentively towards the queen.

“It’s a very thoughtful suggestion,” she says to Gilly, “Thank you, Gilly.” 

“Could I still ask you two questions about the business of actually being lord of somewhere like that?” Gendry says. “I’ve not got much time to myself until the armies move out, but that’ll all be over soon and I don’t know what I’ll do then with…”

“Of course,” Brienne tells him as warmly as she can. She steps on Jaime’s boot under the table. He blinks back into himself. 

“Of course,” he echoes.

After a moment, Pod leans in and quietly says, “I’ll go with you if you…” He jerks his head toward the doors. Jaime shakes his head in a dismissive little twitch. 

“Then tomorrow? We’ve been meeting after the sun goes down, working until dinner,” Gendry says. “Would that work, my lady? In your tower?”

“Oh _I’m_ not a-,” says Gilly. Then, “Yes, of course. Come and find me.” 

Jon strides in with Varys bobbing along at his heels. Sam and Gendry are discussing how crowded the sleeping arrangements in the castle are, but Gendry turns right around and stares at the doors when he catches sight of the two men, dropping the conversation cold. Arya does not follow, but the wolf does, loping in slowly and heading up to the high table to stand across from Bran, entering into what has to be the most disturbing staring contest ever seen in the whole of the seven kingdoms. Varys has coiled parchment clutched in his hands and he hands it to the queen. Sansa subtly tilts her head to get a good look - Jon is speaking to both of them - and then Sansa’s head snaps towards their little group. Brienne is half out of her seat before she quite knows what she’s doing. It might be Tarth. But Sansa gives a placating twitch of her chin and turns back to Jon. Brienne subsides, and in turn passes on a calming look to Jaime who has bolted upright at her sudden movement. Jaime bumps his elbow to Pod’s and Pod goes back to the conversation too. 

It might be the Stormlands. 

The four of them attempt to refocus on Tarly’s concern that still more men have moved into the stairway of the maester’s tower. Gendry, still with half an eye on the door, reveals that he has been sleeping in the smithy. Brienne stews in guilt, thinking of all those men, outside in their summer tents, in their summer leathers. Evenfall and Winterfell. Rain and Snow. 

Gendry begins to gravel about how he only mentioned it because he would have shared any room allotted with other blacksmiths, who are working all hours and who all need a break from the noise and the smoke. 

“All the bloody lords and-,” he cuts himself off. This pronouncement makes the situation unbearable to Brienne. His hair may be cropped, and perhaps he doesn’t look like Robert to Jaime, but to Brienne, he is like Renly. A kindness about the eyes with a stubbornness about the mouth. They were all angry men, in their way, but Gendry actually has cause. 

“You should take Jaime’s room,” Brienne says, without any further thought. 

Pod and Jaime still. Jaime is already looking at her, the burst blood in the corner of his eye is suddenly very obvious with how wide and white his eyes are otherwise. Her gut rolls with mortification. She knows her own face is transforming into a blotchy pink proclamation of her embarrassment. What’s particularly galling is that she still hasn’t achieved anything to warrant shame. She’s just been lying there, next to him, with Podrick as an inappropriate chaperone. 

“No,” says Gendry. “I couldn’t. Lady Sansa wouldn’t throw you out of your room, my-,” lor- his voice skates off the word and now he’s flushed too - “just because they… oh,” he says, looking at Pod and then Brienne. “Right.” 

Tarly makes a strangled noise that Brienne finds so annoying it shocks her out of her paralysis of internal recrimination. It doesn’t help her come up with anything to say. She’d decided to be done with this. To be past embarrassment. 

“I’ll stay with Tyrion,” says Jaime, mildly, already having returned to pouring yet more water, “he won’t mind. I’m quite sure. He’s only here one more night.” She has never seen Jaime humiliated. In the Stark camp he was afraid. When they took his hand, after the screaming, he was just gone. She cringed at his decay and depression, but there was nothing there for the men to beat shame into. He’s just stood and had everything stripped from him without a single blush. He’s not successfully lying to anyone in this little group, that much is clear. Gilly, perhaps, until she asks Sam about it. It’s all so ridiculous. What a lot of nonsense over something that’s none of anyone’s business. It annoys Brienne that she is calmed by his dissembling.

“Hello, Sam,” says Jon Snow, “Lord Gendry.” 

The wolf appears at Brienne’s shoulder. Brienne does not look at the wolf. Jaime does not look at the wolf. He just stares back at her across the table. All the concerns Brienne had are gone in a moment, replaced by utter stillness. 

“Hello,” says Gendry to Jon, and then he gets stuck as Brienne alway does, on the title. “My lord,” he tries, then lamely, “Hello,” to the wolf. Jon puts a hand around the wolfs head and tugs the enormous weight of it into his side.

Jon says, “Would you join the queen?” Jon inclines his head towards Brienne, “If you don’t mind giving him up for a little while, ser.” It’s odd to have the teasing formalities you would direct at a woman appended with that title. 

“Not at all,” says Brienne. She very carefully looks down at the wolf, half convinced that it’s red eyes will be fixed on Jaime. Jaime steps on her foot. Jon is tugging it about by the fur, so it is difficult to be sure, but she thinks it’s looking at their empty plates. Its tongue lolls out. And there are it’s teeth. 

“Gilly?” says Jon expectantly, as though she might object. 

“Of course,” says Gendry. He gathers up his cup. “I’ll see you in a bit?” and he trails off after Jon, only turning around to look back at the doors, where he is immediately chivied along by the wolf. 

“It’s only a big dog,” says Brienne to Pod, mostly to reassure herself, “You saw how he touched it.” 

“I do think it might be hungry,” says Pod. 

“Wonderful,” says Jaime tiredly. “Hungry direwolves and dragons. Did you ever think: where’s my lion?” 

“Or my stacks of gold,” says Pod with a grin. 

“Brienne already has both the moon and the stars,” says Jaime, smiling beatifically. Pod hides a grin behind his cup. 

Brienne says, “Oh, do shut up,” but finds that she can’t quite let it pass unchallenged, even though her face is heating again. “There’s a sun as well,” she says. 

“That too. The moon, the stars and the sun,” says Jaime immediately, “all belonging to Brienne.” He’s attentively tracking whatever nightmarish thing is happening to her face, still showing her his teeth. 

Gilly says, “Oh! I see now,” and she smiles at Brienne and she curls her hand around Tarly’s across the table in full view of anyone who passes by. Tarly’s complexion begins to match Brienne’s. “That’s lovely,” Gilly says. 

Brienne cranes her neck back to Sansa, alone with Tyrion at the high table, but she’s smiling. She can’t help it. If it is the Stormlands, perhaps it will be good news.

***

In the passageway outside their room, Podrick suddenly announces, “ _I_ might stay with Lord Tyrion, my lady.” Pod is paused with his heels hanging over the last step, hand on the turning wall of the staircase. “I’ll find Gendry too.” 

That would be… extremely welcome. 

“Tyrion’s leaving tomorrow,” says Brienne, “He’ll have women with him, surely.”

“Tyrion has given up women,” says Jaime, with his shoulder already to the door, “at least for the moment.” He shoves his way into the room and lets the door fall closed behind him. This seems exceptionally suspect. Tyrion had said he’d given up drinking while drinking. Pod watches her placidly.

“He will have women. You’re quite right. I’ll stay here.”

“Well,” she says, “if he’s given them up. Perhaps you should say goodbye.”

“I could stay and help him ready his things in the morning,” says Pod, “If you don’t mind sparing me, my lady.” He’s smiling at her again now. Brienne meets his eyes and wills herself not to blush. Brienne is _fond_ of Jaime and Jaime is _staying with his brother,_ all very polite fictions. Now she is _sparing_ Pod. She’s perfectly capable of lying her way past strangers, but Brienne will have to get better at this type of dissembling or marry him soon. 

“Very good, Podrick. Yes. Well done.” She shoves her thumbs into her belt which makes her elbows stick out. She can’t remember ever thinking about her elbows outside of her early training, back when she had to learn not to overextend them and strain the joint. Pod’s elbows have always been very well balanced. He’s been a good squire. “Goodnight then, Pod,” she says. Then she has to free her hands to open the door to the room. 

“Goodnight, my lady,” says Podrick, warmly to her back. Then he leans forward and yells “’night!” past her into the room at Jaime. 

Jaime is poking at new wood on the fire. He stops to come and take her cloak from her, looking very pleased with himself at having remembered. He throws it over the desk, picking up his sword to do it. He hasn’t carried the sword today, but then he’d barely left their room except to be disgraced at dinner. It probably wouldn’t have been diplomatic to arrive armed.

“We’ve neglected to give Podrick his evening lesson,” Jaime says, perching back on Brienne’s cloak to examine his sword. Trapping the sheath between his thigh and his gold hand, he draws the sword a handspan. The nakedness of his neck is strange. “Would Sansa see me?” he says. Still staring at the sword. 

“What? When?” she says. 

“Whenever.” Brienne honestly doesn’t know. She can only ask. 

“Are you going to be alright?” Her voice is gruff, not sweetly caring like Sansa’s could be, even when she didn’t mean it. Brienne means it. 

“Yes,” he says, “of course. The dragon queen has granted me a great mercy. How are you, Brienne?” Brienne frowns and jams her thumbs back into her belt. She tucks her elbows. Perhaps it would have been better to keep Pod here. “Sorry,” he says.

“You could go and say goodbye to Tyrion as well,” she offers. He drags his gaze away from the sword to look directly at her for a moment. Then he leans back on the desk, tipping her a smile. 

“Do you want me to go and say goodbye to Tyrion?” Brienne watches him, trying to read every twitch of his face, trying to decipher the way his hand is tracing the sword in his lap. He sighs and lets his face collapse into something more genuine. “Don’t look so worried,” he says. His hands don’t stop mapping the sword. “Cersei never officially restored any of it to me after I was out of the Kingsguard so it’s only a public show for this queen to have stripped it from me.” 

“Your name,” Brienne says.

“Lannister,” he says, blows it with so much air out of his mouth. “She could have _Lannister_ if it was up to me, but she can only stop people saying it in her hearing. It’s the knighthood; to have it taken from me for that particular crime and not the others, it’s a little different, that’s all.” He unsheathes a little more of his sword. “Now you’ve given me this, do you want to practice?” he asks.

Brienne watches his hand on the hilt. She does want to practice. But the last aborted attempt sits like stale bread in her throat. He’d wanted to refuse and hadn’t.

“Come on, Brienne,” he says. Brienne takes a step closer. The first time, with Pod, practice had gone well. 

“I had a thought: with a beat parry, have you tried driving through with your right wrist over your left?” 

Jaime draws the sword, discards the sheath and she takes a couple of healthy steps backwards so he can mime the suggested motion for her.

“Again, it will make me a broader target, expose my right side, and my left arm really isn’t that much weaker, not anymore. It’s only a lifetime of instinct all reversed, when no one else has swapped with me.” He moves away from the desk, swinging the sword in a lazy arc and Brienne moves back again, instinctually. He moves and she moves. They should clear the furniture first. Brienne puts her hand on her sword, keeping her eye keenly on his face. He only looks anticipatory. He’s tracking her expression carefully too, not looking at the sword. She still hesitates. “You’re never going to get to fight the two-handed, unchained Jaime Lannister,” he says. He keeps his sword low, his grip reversed, unthreatening. “I’m sorry.” 

Brienne draws Oathkeeper - against her better judgement, the tourney swords are in the corner - and rolls her weight forwards onto the balls of her feet. 

“Don’t apologise for that of all things. Try it,” she says, and she steps forwards and cuts the sword towards him, without nearly as much force she could bring to bear, giving him time. 

He flips his grip, brings the sword up and beats Oathkeeper away with just his left hand - the force of it successfully knocks her arm away - and he moves aside and quickly bringing his sword up to her chest. He grins. 

“Again,” says Brienne, backing up, there’s not enough space to keep going forwards. They should move the furniture. 

This time when his sword meets hers she absorbs the beat and drives into the parry, pressing quickly back into the line of engagement. It doesn’t seem to dampen his spirits at all. He shakes his arm out, eyes bright.

“Again,” she says, backing up once more. 

This time he throws his right wrist over his left and the ringing noise of her blade being knocked just off path resounds. It might work. His right side is too exposed. It would be no effort at all to come up over his guard. She tries it, loathe to prove him right but feeling the necessity of it. He moves against the flow of the fight. Reversed. When she presses in close he swipes at her with the gloved gold hand and laughs. When she steps away he follows through with his sword instead, bringing it arcing towards her neck. Rather than step back again she brings her sword up two handed, catching his blade. She frees one hand as she drives him away. She mimes punching him in the face, snaking her leading leg out although she’s going to be too late to snag his retreating step. He clearly knows what he’s leaving open, and it’s new enough to her in its left-handed arrangement that she’s concentrating on countering efficiently and documenting weaknesses, so she only notices the brilliant flash of his teeth when he lets her extremely pulled punch push slowly into his jaw. It’s barely an affectionate nudge. She lets it linger.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to tell anyone about the letter,” he says. She drops her fist from his face and retreats, stomach fluttering unpleasantly. Frowning, he touches his gold hand to his jaw. 

“Has anyone made sure Pod knows how to throw a good punch?” he asks. Brienne hasn’t checked. Surely that’s the kind of thing all little boys learn.

“Tourney swords,” she says. It’s senseless to play like this with swords like these. Jaime sighs. 

She doesn’t bother to hold herself back at all. She goes at him like she’d go for Arya, out in the courtyard with Clegane watching. It takes three tries for him to hold her off for long enough that he hits his legs to the desk in retreat. He drops his guard, sitting on the desk again, smiling still. If he’s got energy to smile, then he’s not giving her the same courtesy.

“Seven hells,” he says appreciatively. 

He walks straight past her to move the chair by the fire back to the wall. He turns back to her in the expanded space, bringing his blunted sword up again. She recognises that this is part of his problem. This kind of work is only useful if drills precede it. She’s going to let him do it despite herself. She’s going to be part of the problem. 

She moves in fast. Too fast. He manages to parry with more strength than she was expecting, just enough that with her momentum he comes up inside her guard again - it’s not a bad strategy; kill quickly while the opponent is still struggling to compensate for the left-handed approach - but he can’t free his sword. He mimes stabbing at her with his dead right hand. 

“I beat so many confident men with my off hand and a dagger,” he says, nostalgic. 

Brienne lets him back away. This time they engage carefully, testing his dexterity until he fumbles the angle bringing his grip up and almost walks himself into her sword. For the first time he looks frustrated. He circles about her, so they swap places again, Brienne with her back to the desk.

“I knew what I wanted to do,” he says. He mimes the motion, then again, then again. Now his arm co-operates. She chews her cheek.

“Again,” she says. He crashes in close again and she twists, grabbing for his wrist and ripping his sword out of his grip with a twist of her own - the sword thuds to the ground. His eyes are wide and immediately delighted, he’s flushed already. His eyes flicker to her mouth. Brienne drops his arm.

“You would have beaten me, I think. If we’d met in a tourney or on some battlefield. I was in a spectacularly bad state on that bridge in the Riverlands, but I really think-.”

“I don’t care.” Brienne tries not to look at how bright his eyes are. 

“I think you do,” says Jaime, “just a little. Come on.” 

She does like to win. It just doesn’t mean much here. He picks up the sword again, tests the balance of it and then executes the exact kind of showy flourish her father had refused to allow her to attempt when she was a child. Jaime has spent time learning to do it left-handed. A waste. It looks good. She forgets that there’s no space and lets him too close, watching the clever twist of his wrist. He feints low then brings his right arm up to support his left wrist driving through against her hastily raised sword. There’s no room to retreat and engage properly. The desk is at her back. She waits for the momentum in his thrust carry him just too far, except it doesn’t, until she helps him along with a two handed jerk of her arms, and it’s easy, she only has to hit him. Or tip him. Her gut flips as she twists, grabbing him by the side of his neck and shoving him into his own forward motion. He stumbles past her, trying to bring his sword around but she turns her own to keep it low and trap it against the desk. She keeps her grip to shove him down into the swords. 

“I yield,” he says. 

He’s not smiling anymore, breathing hard beneath her hand, white and pink between his lips. She could shift her grip and drag him back up into her. She’d like to put her hands in his hair and pull. 

“Practice is over,” she says. She drops him and the sword. 

“What?” he says, sounding honestly confused, but she’d known this would be a mistake. “We’ve only just begun. Finally. Brienne?” 

She drags the chair back out to sit in her place in front of the fire and she tugs her boots off, placing them very carefully under the chair. Behind her she can hear him dumping the swords over the desk. He comes to stand in front of her, sighing again. She crosses her arms over her rolling insides. 

“This has been a strange evening,” he says, apologetic and understated. This morning he was a knight. “And you don’t want to-?”

Brienne goes scalding my hot. He knows. Jamie’s eyebrows go up. 

“No,” she says. “Not _now._ Do _you?_ ”

He looks her up and down sceptically. 

“Fine. But come and sit on the bed anyway,” he says and holds out his hand, “Or I’ll sit by your chair and then you’ll feel you have to sit on the floor too.”

She takes his wrist and lets him pretend to pull her up. They sit together on the edge of the bed for a while, knees pressed together, staring at the swords on the desk. Then Jaime starts fumbling to pull his boots off. Brienne moves back to sit on the other side of the bed, crossing her legs. Bootless, he pivots to face her and mirrors her. 

“In an extremely unvarnished way, legitimate children are rather the point of me if we continue with this,” he says, and Brienne isn’t done with blushing and now there is a rising heat behind her eyes that means something else. She blinks it away. She opens her mouth to object. He interrupts. “I’m happy to do that, Brienne. I’ve given children to the Baratheons and I thought I’d given a child to the Greyjoys. I can give you a child for Tarth. But not yet, I assume?”

“Of course not,” Brienne says, flushed and sick. 

“Of course. We can be careful,” he says. “But perhaps you could talk to that Gilly girl? I don’t know anyone to ask in this castle.” 

“Of course that’s not the point of-.” Brienne stops and tries to frown away the prickling sensation in her eyes. That was supposed to be the whole point of her. That’s the duty she couldn’t fulfil and the crushing obligation she had refused. It’s not the whole point of him for her. It’s an accompanying possibility, barely an excuse. She’s sticking this out even if she stays at Winterfell and there’s no anchor weight of a title anymore to pass on to some unsuspectingly heir. “Is that what else was in that letter,” Brienne asks, following, like with Tyrion, the sideways revelation. “The lack of a Greyjoy child?” He nods at her, watching carefully. 

“The way she told me-. I think I already knew it was a lie. But perhaps there just wasn’t a child for very long. People tend to assume the worst of her, not without cause it must be admitted.” Brienne twists her mouth.

“Will you want to kiss me now?” he says. Brienne will, is the awful thing, although not in any way that necessitated sending Pod to sleep elsewhere. She leans in slowly, just a gentle brush of lips against his cheek. It’s a relief when his hand strokes at her ankle. Brienne wants to be gentle. She hasn’t had much chance to be gentle. She pulls back.

“Do you want me to go and say goodbye to Tyrion?”

“Do you want to go and say goodbye to Tyrion?”

They’re friends again, Brienne thinks, Tyrion and Jaime, or perhaps they’re just family. 

“Why would I go? When we could be having conversations like these?” he says, beginning to smile again. 

“Let’s just go to bed,” she says. 

With the fire screened, and the candles out, he unbuckles his hand and tucks it away over the side of the bed. They curl into each other under their furs and Brienne sleeps.

***

She wakes to darkness, strangely alert with no nightmare on her heels. Jaime is sat up next to her, half curled against the headboard. Her head is next to his hip. She clears sleep from her throat. 

“You really can go,” she says, again. Although, she doesn’t know if his rooms are in the inner castle, so perhaps he can’t. Or shouldn’t. Perhaps she could-.

“Sorry. There was a storm,” he says. She doesn’t think anything would stop him if he really wanted to go. She doesn’t think. She reassures herself that all evidence suggests that he will do whatever he wants. She hears rustling but he doesn’t get up. 

“It’s good you made up,” she tells the dark room. She hears his head hit the headboard. 

“Do you want to know why we fought?” Brienne is quiet, waiting for eyes to adjust. “No,” he says. “Quite right. It’s another dirty Lannister secret.” 

“He forgave you for whatever it was?” Brienne asks. 

He reaches across his body to lightly touch her hair with his left hand. She blinks up into the gloom. She can see the white of his eyes now and the vague shape of him.

“I assume so. Apparently he’d already forgiven himself.” She climbs out of bed to light a candle from the mantle, blinking at the sudden glare. She brings it back to his side of the bed and looks down at him, sitting with his arms crossed over his raised knees. She brings the candle close to his face, watching the fanned gold of his eyelashes as he screws his eyes up against the light. 

“Brienne, please put the candle further away.” She puts the candle down beside the bed. She doesn’t get back in.

“Tell me then,” she says. She smothers a yawn. “Let’s get it all out in one night.” Jaime huffs and doesn’t speak. Brienne clears her throat some more. 

“He married a common girl when he was sixteen. Our father found out and had me tell a lie-. When we survived that night, I confessed. That’s why we fought.”

“What did they do to her?” Brienne asks, flat. Jaime turns his hand over.

“They were cruel. After that, I don’t know.” Brienne sits and picks her feet up onto the bedding. She swallows down sickness. 

“My father wouldn’t care,” she says. 

“What.”

“If he is alive. He would never have suggested I marry anyone without some title, but if it was already done it wouldn’t occur to him to object, so long as they knew how to behave at meals, dance and ride well.” 

Jaime tugs at the sleeve hanging over his stump and stares at her for a while longer. She climbs back under the furs beside him even though she is no longer tired. 

“I can ride well,” he says eventually, “but he’ll know that. My reputation precedes me.” Brienne glances sideways at his sullen face. 

“When he did speak of you, he did call you Kingslayer,” she confesses, not that he had spoken favourably of much that happened on the mainland. “But he didn’t know you. I could tell him what you did for me, what we did together. You could explain to him now what happened with the mad king. Not much bothers him.” Not much that was already on Tarth. He turns to her, right shoulder against the headboard. 

“He wasn’t the sort to object when you wanted to learn to fight?” She shakes her head. 

“He encouraged it. Treated me like a son. He taught me himself until I outpaced him, and then his master-at-arms did little else but work with me some days. He had me taught riding and ruling as he would have taught a boy. It all suited me better than my septa’s lessons ever did.”

She sinks down into the comfort of the bed. Sometimes she’d wished to be other than she was and a lady in truth. Sometimes she’d dreamed of the freedom of truly being a man. When people saw her, they sometimes assumed, and it was only when she opened her mouth that they laughed and she had to own herself. The murals on the walls in Evenfall showed beautiful women dancing high on grassy hills, and knights charging on horseback, all small and lovingly rendered. She might have fitted, if she had kept her helmet on and her mouth shut. Jaime looks like he could have walked out and shaken off the cracking paint. 

“But he still tried to marry you to some unworthy-.” Brienne arrives abruptly, angrily in the room, the heat back again behind her eyes again. 

She turns to bite out: “That’s how things are done.” She breathes through her frustration. She won’t have him speaking ill of her father. Especially not when he might be dead. She glares up at the beamed ceiling. Jaime’s silence has the quality of intense disagreement. She ignores it.

“What was he like, the master-at-arms who trained you?”

“Goodwin. He’s been dead a long time.” Perhaps the steward is dead too. The women in the salt pits. The retainers and craftsmen. The families from the mines. Everyone from her dreary childhood and the fraught, empty days of early adulthood gone. She’ll find out. They’ll find out together. “He was a knight.” He swallows audibly. Winterfell is as quiet as she’s ever heard it, not even the constant wind beating against the window. 

“A great knight, to have taught you.” She jerks her head in agreement, distracted now, at last, by a flush in her cheeks instead.

“I learned to dance,” he says with teeth shiny in the candlelight. “Do you want to dance, my lady?” She can’t cope with that. 

“It’s the middle of the night,” she says, gripping onto a fur at her neck. 

“That’s a yes then.” He shoves the covers away from his legs and gets up on his knees. 

“No,” she says, sitting up, grabbing his sleeve and pulling him back against the headboard. He falls easily with his shoulder against the wood. He looks across at her, untroubled. He really is exceedingly beautiful. Handsome, is the word she might dare to say aloud. She doesn’t think it’s the fading beauty that men admit to seeing in women, or that girls see in comely boys. She had seen a shadow, in King’s Landing, of what people must have seen when he was a shining golden youth living out a fireside story. Reassuringly chaste in his white cloak, or at least unassailably occupied _with family._

He brings one knee up to match her, both curled into each other against the headboard. He reaches out to brush his fingers admiringly across the outer curve of her shoulder. She tries rubbing her eyes. 

“Did you ever train with a great sword?”

“Yes,” she says, baffled. 

He nods, again, closer, “I thought so.” 

He maps the muscle at the top of her arm. Then, quite suddenly his hand is hovering in front of her face. 

“How did you get the scar on your lip?”

“Raider,” she says, automatically, blinking down at the hand, feeling slightly cross eyed.

“I’m sorry. Like a pirate?” He’s stilled.

“Yes. He hit me in the face.” Obviously. Gods.

“Did you kill him?” He’s watching her avidly. 

“No. I fell off the pier.” He looks slightly hysterical now. Something strange and manic in his eyes. He’s not stopped staring down at her mouth. Hope could wear a person down. She wants to push her mouth to his fingers. 

“Are you finished confessing now?” she asks.

“Yes.” 

He must be able to feel her quick breath on his hand. Very slowly, he shifts and pushes his thumb to the scar. She doesn’t move, not even when his fingers land lightly on her jaw. It all feels delicately made. Like someone could knick the earthen container and let the precious water all drain away. She puts a hand on his side, feeling his breathing, as fast as hers, as deep as when she’d had him over her sword. 

She struggles to close her lips against the pressure of his thumb so she can swallow. He slides his hand further back, the curl of his mouth, not smiling.

“You really trust me.” 

She nods savagely at him. He pushes in to kiss her, knocking her head back against the headboard. His hips are turned against her, thigh creeping over hers. He’s sharp ribbed and sharp toothed against her until she shoves back against him, turning into him. He pulls back to stare at her.

“Of course,” she reassures. 

“Of course,” he repeats. He wrinkles up his eyes in a strange smile. “I dreamed of you,” he says. 

She wets her lips. Every breath dries her mouth. 

“What did you dream?” 

She hopes he doesn’t mirror the question. She’d dreamed of the feverous wreckage of his body bound in her lap. She’d dreamed of his eyes gone flat as Renly’s had, his head cradled against her stomach. It shivers through her, cold constriction in her chest. She slides further down the bed on her side and looks at the bounce of blood in his neck and the way his eyes are bright and watching her in turn. 

She’s never heard the question when it wasn’t a joke and it wasn’t a threat. Brienne has always had to say no. Brienne has always wanted to say no, but now Brienne wants to say yes, so long as he wants to ask. Brienne doesn’t know how to ask. Even the wildling has never actually worked his way up to that, determined as he is. Perhaps because he knows she will say no, and he prefers the possibility; the excitement of it, this extended moment of wanting. The stretching hope. 

Brienne gathers herself to break it.

“Do you still-?”

He sits up abruptly, tugs off his shirt and slides back next to her. 

“Let’s not talk anymore. This is where we stopped, before. You were-.” 

He traces a hand over her clothed hip and stomach. Then he passes his hand, as she had, up and over the curve of her ribs, still through her shirt and then, new, higher still to push his palm, exploratory, over the muscle that makes up her breast. She swallows again, throat creaking, as he brushes her nipple tight. Somehow, she can feel the touch echoed at the backs of her knees. His wide reverent eyes flicker on her face. She sits up. She strips out of her shirt. She lies back down next to him. 

The flutter of his ribs and stomach is slower now. She reaches out to feel them again, then she glances up at him, waiting to see if he’ll say anything terrible this time. He’s looking at the knotted scars arcing from her neck, over her collarbone and down onto her chest. They’re mostly pressed into the bed. And he’s quiet. So warm under her hand, he shuffles closer on his side, his right arm sliding away under his head and under the pillow. He has the same lye washed hair as her under his arms. Which she knew. But when she touches him there, he starts to grin again, twisting and trying to do the same to her. She catches his hip. The air is so still and warm. She wants to see. She pushes down at the loosened fabric around his waist, revealing arched muscle and bone, sandy hair, then a slither of bare pink skin again, spring leaf soft under her fingers. The movement of his chest turns deliberately measured. She stops there and lets the material fall back into place. She glances back up at the wide greenery of his eyes. 

“We stopped before,” she says. 

“Only because I can’t stop saying things,” he says. He puts his arm around her waist and pulls himself against her, the warm curl of his cock against her stomach as she pulls the covers back up. The hair on his jaw gives as she drags her thumb across it. She holds him harder, trying to keep the moment. 

“You can say things,” she says. 

“But then we’ll have to stop.” 

He pushes through her grip to kiss her again, running his hand experimentally over the exposed muscle in her stomach, his hand pulling free the ties around her waist, his fingers tangling with hers, scratching down through hair, then suddenly delicate, so much lighter than she has ever been with herself. She’d once thought that this was one of the ways in which she was strange, until she’d deciphered enough vulgar comments to realise that no, she was ordinary after all. Jaime catches her teasingly between curled fingers, pulling back from the hold she finds she has on his hair, enough to keep eyes on her face with his arm twisted. He’s watching her greedily. It’s too much. She tugs him in against her, embarrassed at the scrutiny, and closes her eyes, curling around him, his hot mouth against her neck and then her chest and his soft hair against her cheek. He’s pushing against his wrist, and her stomach. She holds his hip to help his do it. She screws her eyes up against the candle light, thinks that they should be saving it, as he reads the rhythm from her hips, his thumb firmer than the pads of his fingers, nearly as much pressure as she wants. She brings her leg up, gathering him in. 

His curled fingers are seeking, where she’s wet. She holds him against her war drum heart, clenching at nothing. He moves with her for an endless, breathless while, heat curling as gentle as his hand had been on her sides. She thinks he’s smiling against her. Then he slides in, enough to be distracting. To douse the building heat. Would this count? For the Septons and maesters? Would someone know if they looked? She tries not to open her eyes.

“Irritating,” she says, twisting her hips and his fingers fall easily away. 

The light insistence of his fingers build in her a familiar wave. He noses against her and kisses at the bones in her chest. She stutters forwards into him, the flutter of pleasure washing daintily through her, a delicate trembling through the bones of her jaw and the extremities of her smallest toes, unexpectedly tender. She feels the shocking heat of his cock against the back of her wrist when she slides her hand over his, gripping him close, finally pressure as heavy as she wants. She feels the abrupt end of his arm bump against her hair as she curls inwards and groans, trying to match his silence and the quiet of the castle. She pushes her face back into his hair and makes herself take her hand away, and then it’s just the stroke of his long fingers against her, as she fights to still her hips, gentling. She could push forwards. She could chase him.

He pulls back, hair in disarray, flushed red and grinning triumphantly. He tucks his right arm back under the pillow, absently wiping his fingers on his hip, watching her as she lets the cool night air fill and fill her wide open chest. 

He opens his mouth to speak. 

“You can do the same for me, or,” he says, pushing down a little on the covers and pulling loose the ties at his own waist, “if we move these you could watch-.” 

She grabs hold of the blankets, and with her other hand she reaches forward and puts her hand flat over his cock. He stops talking. A neat trick. He closes his eyes. She doesn’t quite dare to curl her fingers, although she’s seen plenty of men make the motion. She keeps her touch gentle, mindful of how soft his touch had been, terrified by how vulnerable this skin feels. She tugs at material until he kicks everything away. 

Brienne says, “I don’t think-.” She takes her hand away and his eyes blink open. 

“Really? I thought-. What if I turn away?” he says, caught half in outrage, half in laughter. 

She’s not sure how to say it. It feels like it would be possession. Final. Inexorable. That he would be inviolably hers. Nonsense of course. Only men and young maids believed such tales and she was hardly particularly young, hardly even a maid. 

She says, “Jaime.” He brushes his hair back into place.

“I wouldn’t want to irritate you further, Brienne,” he says, with some type of smile, but he’s shifting back into her, hand on her hip, encouraging when she pulls away the last of what she is wearing, then back behind her thigh.

“Be sensible,” she says, moving her thigh up and out where his hand pushes at her. 

She can’t work out how to touch him suddenly, nerves prickling in her hands. The wetness when he bumps against her. It’s neither a joke nor a threat. She does not have to say no.

“You’re quite right,” he says, “I should set reasonable goals.” 

“No,” she says, “be sensible. If you’re sure.” It’s not a joke, so he can’t treat it like one, even if it would be easier. He kisses her. 

“Alright, Brienne,” he says, “Sensibly, it’s supposed to go a little like this, in the kinder songs. What do you think?” 

He shifts her leg back up over his hip; she had done that correctly then. But then how difficult can it be when she’s seen idiots who couldn’t swing an axe talk about all manner of things? He rolls into her, over her, hand moving to the fold of her knee, up between her legs. Her hands go back to his hips, sharp against her. He holds himself up on his elbow, severed end of his arm still awkwardly reaching towards cover. He’s watching her. She holds her leg in place, and he pushes up on his hand to kiss her again. There is only so much kissing she can manage while still breathing. Then he falls away to reach between them. Parting, setting, slick, curious pressure. She can’t see. She lifts herself up and still can’t see. It’s only her body learning something in practice that she already knows in theory. He glances up at her, quick and green. She closes her eyes against it, too much sensation. Her heart doesn’t beat so painfully when she learns new footwork. 

“It felt too profane to imagine this,” he says, forehead pressed into her chest again. She twists her leg up tighter, trying to move through the stretching moment. She’s well past the amateur’s instinct to retreat. 

“You did not think of it?” She tangles her hands in his hair. His septa was right. She wouldn’t say that it hurts. 

When the sheets are damp against her shoulders and he’s lying heavily against her, stump pressed uncaringly behind her neck, Brienne doesn’t feel particularly altered. She’s able to find her way back to herself, although the strangely bright moonlight makes the room feel a little like an extended part of the kindest dream she’s had in years. The words of those men around campfires were as empty as their boasts of swordsmanship. She’s humming with life. Her muscles happy and sated. She’s pulled back from the warm depths by the rhythm of his knuckles against her stomach, unexpectedly slick between them, then suddenly, slicker. She’d expected the stickiness to be stickier; something binding. He’s wiping his hand on his hip again, She tries idly to sit up, wishes that she’d thought to push him over. He’d said she could watch. 

But he’s fumbling behind to tug covers back over them. Her bones will be boiled clean. She immediately fights their way free of the furs again, cold air pleasant on her naked skin. She thinks perhaps it will make him complain. 

“Seven hells. Really?” says Jaime, curving even further into her for a moment. She warps her arms tightly around his shoulders, hungry for the sensation. His voice is hoarse although he has not made a sound. He puts his teeth to her neck - she jumps - then sits up. It’s only fair she looks at him in turn; that she get to see that warm, quiet watching. 

He meets her eyes briefly, soberly, before he touches a gentle finger to the wide white pool of nerveless skin at the very highest point, closest to her jugular. 

“It’s soft,” he says, marvelling. It hardly feels like anything to her. She does not touch them herself, a habit from when they were healing. He adjusts to trail his fingers over each grove and that sets off needle pricks under her skin, like the blood is rushing back. She manages not to shrug him off. “You didn’t even cry,” he says. Brienne puts her hand up to his ribs and lies down again. 

“There was no time. A bear was trying to kill me.”

He drops a kiss to the point of her collarbone. She can feel his cock against her as she tugs him up towards her mouth. She shifts her thighs together as he licks at the old scar on her lip. 

“Again?” he says, pulling back and grinning at her. “Let’s not sleep. What did you think? Let’s-“ 

He shoves a leg between her thighs, more confident now, dragging his hand down her side as he sits up on his knees. She shifts a leg up to accommodate him, crooking her knee and letting her foot rest on his hip. Then he shifts down. Kissing the deep lines of her hips, pressing her leg out sideways, cheek to the scratchy hair at the juncture of her thigh. She knows what he’s doing. She was chaste, not a fool. Brienne jerks her leg back in, using her foot to press at his hip. Men had bragged about this. Sang dirty songs about this. The bear and the maiden fair. Summer honey. She knew the Bolton men had sometimes meant her the bear and Jaime the maiden. 

She pushes him back more determinedly. He looks up at her, surprised. 

Men liked to boast about how wet they could make a woman. The conquest of devouring, making some faceless body want them so. It had all sounded very improbable. Mostly they fantasised about the other way. She knows. Their cock in someone’s mouth. A dirty everyday domination. Cheaper to buy than fucking. 

“I won’t do the same for you,” she says, although his breath is hot against her in the cold air. She doesn’t want to tell him no. He laughs outright, his hand casual at the crease of her thigh. She rearranges her face into a frown.

“This isn’t a market trade.” 

“Don’t put your belly to the bed,” Brienne says, mindful of the mess that seems to be growing somehow messier. 

“Yes, thank you, Brienne. Any other advice?” Brienne has no other advice. He parts her, looking, and her blood stagnates. Her breath catches, burning unpleasantly, hot in her cheeks, her neck, her chest. She is so wet, like the men had said. She’d prefer the red heat blur of closeness. It’s too much like examination, for a moment, before he touches her, firm. She curls her feet and carefully relaxes into it. She examines him in turn. He’s pink too, high on his cheeks. Shiny where the light catches him, dark between his legs. She throws a foot onto his shoulder as he bends. He kisses her, mouth cooler than she feels, thumb seeking lower. Flat tongue moving the other way. She laces a hand into his hair to hear him sigh again, not anticipating the feel of it against her. She arches and he moves with her. 

It’s all less improbable than she had thought. Summer honey. She’d thought it was poets being fanciful about the taste. She’d worried maybe other women did taste of honey. She thinks maybe it’s the texture of the moment. The slow pouring time. The grit of crystallised syrup. She’s so hot, with the candlelight showing her rushing pink blood through her closed eyelids.

***

Jaime passes her Pod’s cleaned under shirt to ring out over the side of the bath. It’s more mending than shirt now, but they’ve treated it carefully. Hot water cascades out from between her hands where she bunches the well used material. 

“That was an unenviable first command,” Jaime says. 

“The queen says what comes is to be the last war, so perhaps the gods will be kind and it will be my only command.”Brienne lays the shirt out in its proper shape on a drier bit of stone and pokes it flat. 

“If you dealt with that you could manage men through anything.” 

“You think I managed then?” she slides back into the water. She’s not really thought about it much since, but she’d worried at the time, the dissolving hold she’d had on her understanding of how many men she had and where they were.

“Yes,” he says, ‘Of course. None of them ran. That’s extraordinary. And men who insist on having control over every little thing die quickly.”

He drifts over, moving low in the water, to sit next to her on the lowered bench. He pats her thigh encouragingly. Then he slides down and shuts his eyes. Brienne finishes scrubbing under her ams and after a moment, slides down next to him and does the same. 

They are flouting the rules separating use of the baths. It might be late enough for men, or early enough for women. Brienne idly asks, “How did you break your nose?”

“What? I didn’t-,” he says. He sits straight up in the water and turns towards her. “What’s wrong with my nose?” Brienne splashes around, looking for a new cloth. 

“Nothing is wrong with it. Your sister’s is-.” She dumps water over her face. “What about the scar on your leg?”

They had intended to sneak away as quickly as they’d come, but now the warm steam has curled about them and dulled their minds entirely to the possibility of discovery. Brienne keeps thinking about getting out and going back to bed. She keeps thinking about it. They have time.

Jaime sits back with a huff. 

“Rock I think. A horse fell under me. Raked the whole leg open. Lucky really,” - he touches his fingers to the faint scars on his face - “You know these,” he says, although the wounds had been there when she met him. Then he twists his arm trying to look at his shoulder. “Here, I’ve actually something from a sword,” he says, craning around to look. He pauses, feeling the skin with his fingers. “Oh, I haven’t thought about it in years. I think it might be gone.” He slumps down dejectedly, blocking Brienne’s view of whatever it is. She certainly hasn’t noticed it.

“What happened to your toes?” he says. Brienne brings her right foot out of the water so they can observe them together. They are bent, but they do not interfere with walking or running, and that’s what matters. 

“Crushed,” she says sullenly. 

“Horse? Man?”

“Boat,” Brienne says. “You can swim?”

“Yes, of course. I grew up by the sea.” He sinks further into the bath, water up to his chin. Steam reddening his skin. “Is that a necessity? For Tarth? Like riding and good manners, dancing and height.” Brienne shrugs. She could teach him, but as it turns out, most things are much harder to learn as an adult. 

“Do you think Pod can swim?” he asks. Brienne contemplates this. There won’t be any learning here. The water is shallow.

Brienne yawns widely, feeling very accomplished. All that worrying. Although she does think that she now understands why people get themselves into quite such a state over this sort of thing. She’s quite sure she’s never felt about anyone, what she feels for Jaime right now. This unfortunately verdant sentimentality. The bubbling stream of silly possession when she looks at him. She doesn’t have to hide anything when he looks at her, what would be the point. She yawns again. 

“Don’t you think we ought to be going?” Jaime says, and he drifts out in front of her, chin still submerged in the water, his hair and eyelashes and ears all wet and shiny. He’s sharp again, she thinks, with his hair pushed back, but she can put her toes on top of his on the bath’s stone floor, an entirely different intimacy to the churning anxiety of their last shared bath. 

Brienne asks, “So you don’t have any more confessions?” She wants him to feel the same; like he doesn’t have to hide a thing. 

“You know,” says Jaime, looking only slightly strained, “I think you must know every terrible thing. Do you wish to unburden yourself of anything? As a girl, did you ever steal from the kitchens. Or did you once think something very cutting about-.”

“This is not a confession,” interrupts Brienne, “but you should know for practicalities sake that I killed Stannis Baratheon.” 

Jaime puts his hands in over his hair, pauses, and carefully submerges himself up to the very top of his head in the water. Brienne pushes down more firmly with her toes. He comes up again, moving his arms slowly under the water to keep his place. 

“You said you would.” He turns his head to examine her from a new angle, like he’s enjoying himself. 

“Well?” she says.

“I’m trying to work out why you don’t look pleased about it.” 

Brienne has no desire to run through it again, having inflicted it on poor Grey Worm, but she does feel much better for having said it aloud. She tacks differently. She admits to herself that she might have to care what people think about this. 

“Everyone in the south already believes me to have murdered Renly,” she says. “Now I have killed Stannis in truth for a crime no one will believe. We should keep this in mind.” That is the practicality of the situation. The rest will dissipate. The rest is floating away like steam whenever she has the time to sit and time to sleep. 

Jaime says, “No one who knows you will think you a liar or a murderer, Brienne.” 

“They do not know me,” she says. 

“Did anyone like Stannis very much?” he says, a little amused. “Will anyone really notice that he’s not still brooding on Dragonstone?”

“They like me far less,” says Brienne, “and we shouldn’t laugh at him. Jon says he came north to fight against the dead.”

“So it’s alright to kill him but not to continue a reliable tradition of laughing at him,” says Jaime. “They will all know about the army of the dead by now, and the queen will fly through with her dragons. No one will doubt the existence of a shadowy assassin.” 

Brienne crosses her arms. She suspects that believing in one magical thing will not predispose people to believe in others when it is easier to doubt. When people saw the dragons, the dragons become real. The red woman has vanished, leaving Brienne without the possibility of providing proof. 

“Jaime,” she says, as gently as she can, “I don’t think people will believe anything they can’t see for themselves, and that includes our dead men.” It still comes out a little short. 

It takes Jaime longer to speak this time. He looks honestly upset by the idea. 

“Alright,” he says, “so _if_ people won’t believe you, you can get the Starks to back you. Jon will presumably be legitimised and made into a king again. Who else could stop you?”

Brienne supposes that is the heart of it. It’s not so much about belief as it is about the balance of power. It’s so different to Jaime and his king - she had sworn nothing to Stannis, owed him nothing but his death, and there was no urgency, no lives saved, he had nearly been dead - and yet it’s all flattened and made part of the same game. Jaime moves back to sit beside her, their knees bumping. 

“How about this?” Jaime says. “I didn’t know you had done it. No one seems to know it. You do not want accolades for it, obviously, so you can simply tell no one. The blood is long gone from your sword. Is this what you want me to say?” 

“I don’t want you to say what you suppose I want to hear,” says Brienne, “I don’t know what I want to hear.” Stale bread is caught beneath her breast bone. “I won’t lie,” she says. 

“It’s not the same as lying,” says Jaime, exasperated. “You know that. I know you know that. I’ve seen you lie reasonably fluently when it was practical. This seems like the practical choice; sometimes bringing certain things to light in certain circles is politically expedient, and sometimes it is not.” She glares suspiciously at the appeal to practicality. “What?” says Jaime, “that wasn’t what you wanted to hear.”

It’s not what she’d like to tell Gendry if he asked her advice on the same issue. 

“That’s not how I was raised,” she says. “That is not how I have tried to live. Back in Tarth-.”

“It’s how you have been living. Did you leave when you were a child?” he asks.

“No,” Brienne says, and she lowers her eyebrows deliberately. She doesn’t want to be patronised.

“Then you should know better than that,” he says. “I know for a _fact_ that you do know better than that.” 

“It’s quite simple,” says Brienne, “there is lying I disapprove of, and lying that I consider to be necessary.” Jaime’s face creases into amusement. 

“I forgot you were so…” He laughs. 

“But,” she says, and he rolls his eyes, “honesty and decency are not childish scruples, I-.”

“There are fathoms between decency and bone headed stupidity,” he snaps. “I’m not saying that you lie to your father, if by the-. If you find him well. I’m suggesting that the Storm Lords will never know to ask who killed Stannis. Perhaps the Bolton’s killed him. Perhaps the Wildlings. Maybe he fell in a pond and got frostbite.”

“They will ask me to account for Renly. One brother follows from the other.” 

Jaime says, “They really did not like you? Are you sure?” Brienne tightens her crossed arms. Jaime reaches across to touch a finger to her elbow. Then he lies back and shuts his eyes again.

“Well then,” he says, “we go back to the Starks and the queen and we hope she’s not hacked off that you’ve set me up in Evenfall, if anyone does stir themselves to object to you all the way off on your island. Your blacksmith will back you even if she doesn’t.” 

“Gendry will need to look after himself.”

“Well, who is to stop you from doing the same,” he groans. “It’s only inaction. Not telling a little part of the story. Refuse to tell anyone anything about anything; that’s what I’ve always done and obviously that’s worked out brilliantly,” - he indicates the warm bath and his extended legs - “Isn’t that what your father did? He came out of that last war with his reputation undamaged and no blood on his hands by very studiously doing absolutely nothing.”

“Well it’s too late for that,” says Brienne, and Jaime’s mouth pulls up again. She basks in it for a moment. “My point is that if you brand the desire for transparency as simple mindedness, I think it makes it very easy to never try for decency at all,” she says. 

“I’m trying for decency,” Jaime says, “maidenly honours aside.” Brienne turns her head very slowly to look down at him. He cracks open one eye to look up at her. “I’m trying,” he repeats, very sincerely. “Think about it, please.” 

“Obviously I’ll think about it,” Brienne says. “I wouldn’t have bothered to have the conversation otherwise.” Jaime breathes out a laugh. 

“Let’s go before someone comes in and finds us. It must be nearly time for the castle to wake.” 

Brienne hastens out of the water, scrubbing herself as dry as she can manage with the steam sodden cloths. Water cools quickly between wool and skin and it’s deathly cold in some of the corridors. 

Brienne says, back turned, tying herself back into her underthings, “Sansa knows how to use honesty. Sansa doesn’t lie.”

“Sansa doesn’t lie to _you._ ” says Jaime. Like he knows what Sansa does. “You know, you’re doing a lot better than I ever did with all this nonsense. Perhaps you know best.”

“I do know best,” says Brienne. “I’m going to tell everyone the exact truth and then go to Tarth and ignore them all.” 

Jaime stamps his way into his boots. 

“Very sensible,” he says, “What do you bet that none of the Storm Lords even know how to swim. I can tell that you’ve really thought this through.”

“Thank you,” says Brienne, lacing up the neck of her shirt so she looks put together.

Jaime takes an absolute age tying knots so he just hides all his untidy layers under his jacket and his cloak. No one is expecting him to look respectable.

He gathers up the few items of clothing that they’re not wearing between the three of them from where they’re lying about sopping wet on the floor. They’ll dry soon enough. They’d be ready to pack. 

In the corridors they pass an early rising woman. She’s scrubbing at her face and her grey streaked hair is escaping wildly from the knot at the nape of her neck. The woman bobs her lead low as they stride past, but her eyes follow them speculatively. 

“Just in time,” says Jaime, grinning, picking up his pace and weaving out in front of her. He’s leaving an incriminating trail of dripped water from fisted bundle of wet clothes he’s holding away from his body. 

By the time they get to their staircase they’re almost running, bouncing into each other and for some reason, she fights him a little over who turns the handle on the door. They slam it closed behind them and immediately, in the room above they hear the muted thud of feet hitting the boards on a path towards the fire. Brienne presses her mouth thin, feeling laughter now, partially a result of the needlessly panic ridden dash up the stairs, rising in her throat. She thinks that _this_ is childish, but she didn’t much experience with childish companionship. Jaime laughs easily and Brienne takes the bundled clothing from him, to start laying it out flat by the fire. 

Jaime puts his nose back to the window again. 

“The light is strange,” he says, “the moon must still be bright. You should be able to open these windows.”

***

Pod wakes them with bowls jewelled with bright peas, light floods in and Jaime’s hair is still all sticking up on one side of his head. 

The dragons are screaming, but really it’s very faint through the walls. 

There’s no meat, but there hasn’t been for days.

“Thank you, Podrick,” she says, smiling at him. 

Pod shrugs.

“Bad news,” he says, “but Lord Tyrion is here for another day at least.” 

They find an angry lord of somewhere or other kicking the barely slitted door at the bottom of the tower. 

“Excuse me, my lord,” says Jaime, “I think you’ll have to go about.” 

He glares at them. “My lady,” he says, and stalks off. 

There’s snow half-way up the minuscule crack in the door, but the sky she can see is blue. 

Pod throws his shoulder at the issue.

“Yes,” he says, dusting himself off. “I agree. We’ll have to go about.” 

Jaime wavers at the doors of the great hall, but Brienne tugs him out with them. It’s not so bad, Brienne thinks: the wind has whipped the snow all against one side of the courtyards. Many of the wagons need digging out, but there are men all about and most of the two wheeled carts are already free. They attract perhaps a little more attention than Brienne would like and Sansa, Gendry and Tyrion are staring down at them from the external walkway. 

They find their door and contemplate it. It’s looks almost new. Finding no spare shovels about, they set to kicking at the snow until they have compacted the bottom layer down and heaped the top up on either side ineffectually. It still can’t be opened. They regroup. They look speculatively at all the northerners with new shovels.

“Gendry hasn’t been working for nothing,” Jaime says. Brienne had been there when Sansa and the steward had commissioned all these shovels. 

Pod snags two from someone in an unusually improvised furry head covering and Brienne and Pod make short work of it then. It’s good work too - warming and satisfyingly simple - although stomping down snow won’t be a mistake she repeats. 

“Look up there,” says Jaime, once they’re finished, she and Pod breathing great blooms of white air out of their mouths. 

There is a door up in the wall, the lip of it above even Brienne’s head. She squints at it sceptically, glad at least not to see any external hinges. It’s older. 

“Well,” says Podrick. “It’s good they thought to put that in. I’m glad.” Brienne glumly adds this to her list of concerns for Sansa. She and Tyrion are gone from the walkway. 

Behind them, the sickening crunch of wood breaking skitters through the courtyard. The door opens abruptly outwards, hitting Pod. Brienne steps forward. 

Pod says, “Watch-! Oh. Excuse me, my lord. Lady Flint. Good morning.” 

Brienne relaxes her grip on the shovel. It’s the woman from the baths with the hair, now all coiled up, following after a reasonably tall man who inclines his head just barely to Brienne. Jaime rolls his eyes behind the man’s back, ignored. The woman glares around at them. She had seemed friendly enough two days ago. 

“You see, it’s not right,” she says, hurrying to catch up with the man. “It’s not right to send me back. It’s alright for you. Going south. I won’t…”

“Where do they come from?” says Jaime. “They multiply. Lord Flint. I thought he was terribly old and all his sons had curly hair.”

“All dead,” says Pod. “But there’s still a few of them about. I don’t know what relation he was but they’ve got the old man’s room under us.”

The man with the fur piled on his head comes by to take his shovels back - his mood to the tune of the man shrieking about axels behind them - and presumably hears the end of that. Pod fidgets until the man has gone away. 

“Jaime,” says Brienne, finding that she’s been looking at Jaime looking at her for a little while now. She can see blond pin pricks of hair in the sun in the places on his neck that he had shaved. He’s got his arms crossed and his shoulders up. Inadequately dressed. 

“Yes?” he says. 

“You’re not supposed to be out here,” she realises. 

Sansa and Tyrion aren’t in the great hall, but there is a suspiciously familiar child under the far end of the nearest table, rubbing it’s face with small fists, putting it’s fingers on the floor, snatching them away, and crying silently with it’s mouth wide open.

Brienne says, “Littler Sam?” and casts about the hall. There are a group of southern men rolling their shoulders and comparing blisters by the fire. Jaime says, “Right, let’s get this over with,” and is already half way across the room towards them. 

Podrick bends down to get a better look.

“Think that’s a different one,” he says, “But all the same…” 

Brienne doesn’t want to investigate. She wants to see Sansa. She looks about again desperately. 

“It will be alright,” she says, but then a particularly harrowing gust of air blows through the open doors. “We can keep an eye on it from here,” she tries. If children died at a little cold wind, there would be no Wildlings, she reasons. No Free Folk. She sighs. She heads over.

Reaching under the table she gathers up a handful of blanket and drags the child’s unresisting weight across the floor. 

“Oops,” she says, without knowing why: she’s absolutely doing this on purpose. “Oops,” she says, picking it up. Gods, it’s her Septa, rising up unbidden out of her mouth. She crushes that back down. 

The child whines, but its too small for that too matter. How awful to be so helpless. 

“Don’t cry, Littler Sam,” she says. “There’s no use crying. Don’t cry.” That’s her father. That’s not so bad. 

“What are you doing?” says Jaime, swooping back in. “Careful,” then more calmly, “Brienne, it _will_ cry.” 

It was already crying. Brienne holds the child away from her body, sat in the crook of her elbow, with it’s legs on either side of her arm. This is a strain, and unstable, but good because they are face to face. She presses her other hand to it’s tiny chest so that it can’t fall off and says, “We’ve met before, I think.” It’s looking at her with it’s bulbous eyes, shocked - she thinks - into closing its mouth and swallowing its tears. It’s definitely the same face. 

Then the child whispers, “No,” uncertainly and Brienne nearly drops it. She’d never forgive herself, but she hadn’t known it could speak. She thrusts it at Jaime who fumbles it on to his hip and cranes away from it. 

“It’s Gilly’s,” says Brienne, in explanation. 

“Right,” he says. “Pod?”

“No,” whispers the child when Podrick takes the child under the arms and hurriedly sits it on the table, gathering the ragged blankets it’s draped in into place, it tries, querulously, “What?” 

“What’s what?” Podrick asks. 

“Don’t confuse it,” Brienne says. “Should it be on the edge like that?” 

“Where’s your mum?” Pod says. “How old are you?”

“Old,” says the child, albeit indistinctly, and beats it’s fist on it’s leg. Brienne shrugs off thoughts of Bran. It tries some manoeuvre that fails on the polished wood. Pod shunts it back into the middle of the table and retreats again. 

“If it’s this big,” says Jaime, making the approximate height of the child between his hands, “it must be over two summers at least by the old way of things, so it should be able to tell us.” 

Snot emerges from the nose and just - stays there. They all pretend not to notice. Brienne decides to focus on the lack of shoes and the bare hands. It’s sniffing theatrically, more interested in lifting it’s socked feet up in it’s fists and sliding them on the polished wood than in their hovering presences.

Brienne leans down. “Where are your shoes?” she says, concern making her voice sound more accusatory than she had anticipated. The child doesn’t seem to care. 

“Feet, feet, feet,” says the child, which is practically conversational, like this is a common question. “Oh no,” it sighs. It pulls at the wool on it’s feet. “Oh no. Where-?” it starts. It sniffs again. Then again. It’s cheeks are becoming redder. 

“She’ll be back very soon,” says Brienne, and this time her voice is smooth and calm and comforting. She feels very accomplished. The child bursts into wet little hiccups of despair. Jaime puts his hands out, vindicated. 

“Can’t,” it says and it looks up and makes terrible eye contact with her. “No, oh no, no, no.”

“Oh no,” Podrick agrees, as it slaps it’s fist down onto the table and begins to pull itself back towards the edge.

“Littler Sam,” says Brienne, “could you please not do that.” 

People are looking at them now. The crying isn’t silent anymore. Jaime picks it up and tries to indicate that she take it . The child pushes itself as far from his body as it can, fills it’s little body with all the air in the hall and _wails_. Jaime winces. 

“Come on. Womanly something or other,” Jaime suggests.

Brienne tells him to fuck off and then regrets it. 

“Sorry,” she tells Littler Sam.

“Absolutely not,” says Podrick, fending the pair of them off. “I’ll go and find someone,” so Jaime puts the child against his shoulder and stands there glowering while it grizzles into his ear. 

“How did this happen to you?” he says. “I told them not to. I know I’m horrid. I’m horrid and strange. I’d put you back under the table if everyone wasn’t watching. I would, I would, I promise, I promise. Straight back under there. No hesitation; I’m so horrid,” and on and on. 

“Alright, I’ll have a turn,” says Brienne, unable to bear it. “It’s my fault.” 

“Do you want him to make that noise again?” he says.

Brienne tries to stand authoritatively so that everyone one knows that she is in control of the situation and that Jaime hasn’t taken up torturing babies. 

Jaime is saying, “I’m nasty and horrid. I know,” over and over again, and surprisingly, this does appear to be quieting to the child, if not to Brienne.

“Can you stop saying that about yourself?” she says, “It understands.”

“That I’m horrid?” he tips away from the child so it can see his face. “I could insult you instead?” he says. The child does pause at that, and then it snorts - more snot, applied to its fists - and it’s seamlessly back to the hiccuping whimpers again. 

“So long as I don’t have to listen to that anymore,” says Brienne. Jaime raises his eyebrows at her over the child’s head. 

“Back under the table,” Jaime tells Littler Sam, getting into it now and bouncing the child about a little. “Would those Northern busybodies over there come and deal with this if we both got under there? They think I’m horrid but maybe they think you’re worse. Oh no.” 

Pod comes back with Gilly eventually. They’re both a little more white-faced than normal and the child gets louder the moment it sees her, reaching desperately. Brienne looks away until he’s back in her arms. 

Gilly takes Littler Sam and presses her nose into his ear and his hair and his little snot covered hands that she gathers up to kiss.

“There was a dead man on the step,” she tells them, wiping his blotchy face with her sleeve. “I’m so sorry. There was boy here,” she looks about. “I couldn’t let him see. He was frozen, I think, while he slept. Not the boy. He said he’d hold Little Sam. I don’t know why I’m so-.” She tells the child, “Oh no, oh no.” 

“It was no trouble,” says Brienne and Jaime coughs. 

“I should go,” says Gilly. “I don’t know why we’re like this. It was just a normal dead body. I asked those nice crows to fly him away. You’re too old to cry, hush now. Hush now. They’re moving it right now so we can go back. They’re going to burn it up.” 

“It was nice to meet you,” says Podrick, waving, “Bye bye,” but the child is completely silent now it’s wrapped up in Gilly’s arms. 

“A conversationalist,” says Jaime, gesturing. He’s too far away to elbow, but Gilly just laughs. 

“Sam said his brother was slow to speak, and he grew up to die well.” She laughs again. “There that’s better,” she says. “I don’t know what came over me. Just another dead boy. We’re a bit sorry, but we’re not scared, oh no,” she tells the child, wandering off. 

After they’re gone, Brienne experimentally puts her bare hand down on the stone floor. It’s cold. It’s really cold. 

“Littler Sam should have shoes, shouldn’t he?” she says, “At that age? In this weather? And proper clothes?”

“I’ll start sewing immediately,” Jaime says, “but in all seriousness, he’ll be twice the size before you’ve found anything.” Brienne does not know any women except Sansa and Arya to ask. Sansa has enough to do, and she can’t imagine that Arya would be particularly interested. She frowns. She should know someone in this castle who could help, but it’s like Tarth, she walks quickly and she keeps her head down.

“No one likes anyone else’s children,” Jaime says. She realises she has been glaring at the open door. What could a helpless child do to make you dislike it? Everyone who isn’t awful likes children. She glares at him. 

“I don’t dislike a child,” she tells him. Jaime pulls a face at her. “Besides, I have to see Lady Sansa,” she says and makes to sail off. 

“I’d like to see Lady Sansa,” he calls after her. She knows, so she ignores him. Then she doubles back, remembering those stupid peas for the horse in his belt. 

“You have to go back to the room.” 

“Oh, but the queen has made her grand pronouncement,” he says. “Your lady Sansa already saw me out there. What does it matter now? I could help-.”

“Remember the moral boost? The galvanised stone throwing mob?”

Jaime says, “Stop remembering the things I say.” Self-consciously, she reaches out and puts her hand on his shoulder. She knows what that feels like without his cloak and all his layers between them. She takes her hand away again quickly. 

“Just for a little while longer,” she says, taking a couple of steps backwards to keep him in sight. He doesn’t look convinced. 

“I know, I’ll go and lie in bed all day. The horror. The unfairness. The things you ask of me.” Pod smiles and rolls his eyes. Jaime goes. She jerks her chin to direct Pod after him. 

“Just see him to the room?” she says. 

Pod shrugs. 

“Of course,” he says. “I’ll be with Lord Tyrion if you need me.”

***

Clegane is leaning next to Sansa’s door. 

“Hello,” he says. Brienne looks him up and down. He’s armed. He’s at her post. 

Brienne says, “Don’t start,” which makes him laugh, but he knocks, opens the door and announces her. 

“Brienne,” says Sansa, arms full of cups and plates, a moment before she drops them all on a sideboard. “I was just leaving. Today’s pyre. No Dothraki so we can have it earlier. Jon’s worried the wind will pick up again and-.” 

“Let me-” starts Brienne, but Sansa snags the one rolling cup and adds it to the pile, turning crisply to block the collection from Brienne’s reaching hands.

“Ser Brienne,” she says, with the air of someone attempting to start a conversation from scratch. “I have Clegane with me today. What can I do for you?”

Brienne says, “I’m sorry about earlier. He’s back in keep. I came to see what I could do for you, my lady.” Sansa wilts immediately. Brienne watches her with concern. 

“Thank you,” Sansa says. Then she stares into nothing, eyes moving like she’s reading, blinking occasionally.

“A moment by the fire?” says Brienne eventually, gently, and Sansa nods but doesn’t actually move. Brienne puts out a cautious hand, light on the very edge of her shoulder, to try and nudge her towards the chairs there. 

“You could select a new guard,” says Sansa, coming back all at once. “You could begin selecting new men for the guard in my name. I can’t delay. I’ll miss my opportunity.” 

“Yes,” says Brienne immediately. “Of course.” 

“No southern men,” Sansa says. “No Night’s Watch.” 

Brienne nods smartly. 

“You’ll have two days,” says Sansa. “I think.” 

“Let’s sit down for a moment, my lady,” says Brienne. “By the fire, my lady. Just for a moment. Sansa?” Then inspiration hits. “Was there news from the Stormlands?” She puts her hand back just besides Sansa’s shoulder and herds her a little. Sansa shrugs her away, but goes. So maybe not back all at once. 

“Yes,” says Sansa. “From Storm’s End. Just the steward, but it was positive. Well done.” Brienne wants to sit down now; the relief hits her hard. “He wants to go south,” says Sansa, sitting and scowling. “That’s a problem. If I could have held him here—. But-.”

“South. When?” interrupts Brienne, without thinking. Sansa blinks at her.

“With the queen.” Brienne sits down. 

After a little while, Sansa starts looking about herself. “But what am I doing sitting here?” She gets up, and Brienne automatically rises too. 

“I’ll replace the guard,” says Brienne and she goes to collect the stack of plates and cups.

“Thank you,” says Sansa again and then she visibly gathers herself into a woman with a wolf on her shoulder. And Brienne remembers that she does have a request. 

“My lady…” she starts. Sansa pinches her mouth, like she can anticipate the direction of Brienne’s request. “Jaime wants to speak to you. I don’t know why, but-.”

“No,” says Sansa, walking past her. “I don’t have time.” 

Sansa has to open the door for Brienne because Brienne’s arms are full, which momentarily dents her terrifying Lady of Winterfell affect, but then she locks her door and marches off with Clegane at her heels, and it’s doubly restored. Brienne is pretty sure she sees a flit of mousy hair and pointy features when she turns towards the kitchens, but she ignores it.

Arya appears the moment she’s discarded her armful on the long tables outside the kitchens. 

“Come hunting with me,” she says, around a mouthful of bread. Brienne blinks, not yet recovered from the last Stark. Arya tears off more from the crust in her hand and then offers the rest to Brienne. 

“No, thank you,” says Brienne, even though it looks hot and like the crust will have some hint of salt. “I already ate. You should have it.” Arya jerks her head towards the hall. “Come hunting with me,” Arya repeats, walking away. Brienne is helplessly pulled along in the face of whatever new disaster this is. “Want to hear when they last caught something?” says Arya.

“If I must,” says Brienne tonelessly, as they arrive in the great hall, and Arya turns to laugh where Brienne can see her. Brienne lets herself smile back, trying to shift the weight of the water skin settling her ribs. Walking backwards, popping the last of the bread into her mouth, Arya says, “Nothing since before that night.”

Bran is in the hall. Someone has positioned him by the fire so he can watch the scraggly collection of north men and Free Folk being corralled by Jon Snow. They are all wet and exhausted looking. Red and shiny now they’re out of the cold. There is Tormund. He waves. Brienne does not. 

Arya takes up position next to Bran. 

“I’m not a hunter,” says Brienne. Arya ignores her. “And what are the wolves eating? There must be something.”

Jon Snow turns all the way around to stare at her. The men behind him only increase their volume.

“Be quiet!” he shouts. It’s very effective. To Brienne he says, “You can hear the wolves?” She is aware that Bran is staring up at her now too.

“No,” she says. He loses all interest in her again. 

“Wolves can survive for a long time without eating,” says Bran, as Jon Snow picks up his encouraging speech. 

Brienne eyes Bran sideways, still unsure as to whether this is all some extended joke of the variety she doesn’t understand. Arya always seems amused by his proclamations.

“No they can’t,” Arya says.

“These wolves…” says Bran, trailing off portentously. 

“How often do they need to eat?” Brienne asks. 

“They won’t die for a few weeks,” says Arya with complete confidence. “They can eat the grass if the snow stays light enough to dig. They like to dig.” 

“And it’s already been… nine days,” says Brienne. Nine days since she wrote to her father. 

“Maybe ten,” Arya says. “No one hunted the day the king approached.” 

“We could eat the wolves,” says Bran, slowly. Brienne looks sideways at him again. She does wish he would stop. But they could eat the wolves.

“ _That’s_ not funny,” Arya says. “Shut up.” When the men disperse, Arya jerks her head for Brienne to follow. 

“Arya, there’s something I need to do for Sansa.” Arya looks around, honestly surprised.

“She didn’t tell me that,” Arya says, but then she keeps going. Brienne doesn’t move. She has Sansa and Jaime to think of. She can’t wander off. 

“You know I can’t spend the days we’d need out there, and there must be-.”

“We won’t even go beyond the walls,” calls Arya. “Come on. Let’s hunt.” Brienne goes.

***

Brienne drags herself back up the stairs of the keep in the dark. There’s a flicker of fire-light spilling under her door and it warms her even before she enters the room. Jaime is lying on his front, with his left arm hanging off the bed, spinning a knife. He sits up slowly as she dumps her cloak and arranges her boots under the desk. 

“Alright?” he says. 

Brienne needs to oil her boots. It’s the last task, and then all her affects will be ordered and ready for travel. She gets her supplies out of the chest. 

“Wait. Wait,” says Jaime, coming over and taking them from her. She looms suddenly close and then turn away. “I’ll do that. I can do that. I forgot about your cloak.” Brienne sinks down onto her comfortable bed. She watches Jaime wet a rag in the depleted bowl by the fire and wipe the boots down. He opens the grease by holding the pot between his legs. 

“We caught a man trading meat stolen from the stores,” she says. Jaime pauses only for a moment. “There are no animals to hunt,” she says. He places one boot under the desk and picks up the other. “Every man who eats in the guard’s hall is a dangerous fool.” 

“But otherwise a good day?” She blows something like a laugh out of her nose.

“No Lord Blacksmith,” he says, and she looks at him sharply, wondering if he somehow knows that Gendry is leaving. Tyrion might have been saying things he shouldn’t again. “I suppose he’s off with Gilly.” Then he holds his hands up at her continued glare. “My apologies,” he says. “Blacksmith Lord Paramount.”

“I haven’t seen him,” says Brienne truthfully. She has nothing to tell Jaime about Gendry, when Gendry hasn’t asked anything of her yet. She finds that she does not like sitting and watching him do this work. “I’ll sharpen my sword,” she says, even though she’d polished it up the day after dead. Jaime puts the other boot under the desk and frowns at her as she heaves herself off the bed. “What?” she says. 

“You don’t need to do anything to valaryian steel,” he says, “That’s part of its appeal.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says, but then she thinks back over the condition of the sword, the way she’s gradually given up on more than showing it the stone. Brienne sits down again. She’s been caring for that sword for years. It has given her something to do with her hands. Jaime looks like he’s enjoying seeing the revelation on her face.

“Here,” he says, picking up their swords. “Fight me.”

Brienne blinks at him.

“No,” she says. Then, “Podrick is with Lord Tyrion.” 

Jaime shrugs.

“I believe so. I haven’t seen them.” He puts the swords back down. “No storm tonight.” 

“No,” she says. Jaime has left the rags and the pot under the desk. He catches her looking and heads back over guiltily, stashing the grease back in the chest. 

“You look… tired,” he says, gently. “Did you ask Sansa if she’d see me? Here.” He crouches in front of her and starts picking at the ties on her jacket. 

“I asked,” she says, pushing his hands away. _”I don’t want to go to bed.”_ She’s not tired. She takes the jacket off anyway. “She said she wouldn’t.” 

“I see,” he says, still crouching. “And the other thing?” 

Brienne wrings out her memories of last night, trying to remember the other thing. They are detailed memories. He taps her leg.

“I can carry a message for you,” she says. He shrugs. “Or Pod could.” If it’s a secret from Brienne. The skin of water that settled in her ribs this morning is still there. She examines him and tries to remember what else he’d asked for. Nothing. She’s sure. She remembers the things he says. She remembers that he’d said that. 

“What’s wrong with you?” he says eventually, peering at her somewhat accusingly. 

“Nothing,” says Brienne. Then, more truthfully, she says, “The man we caught. They had to cut off his left hand.” All those other northern men had been happy to see it. A galvanised mob. 

“Ah,” says Jaime, looking down. He puts his elbows on her knees. “Well, they won’t be able to march him south now, will they.” 

“What was the other thing?” Brienne says. “I’m sorry.” Jaime keeps his eyes down and rubs at his face. 

“How can they stay, if the animals are gone?” he says, question for question. “What do the Wildlings think is happening?”

“Free Folk,” corrects Brienne, because she doesn’t know. 

_“Free Folk,”_ he repeats, and stands up and drifts away. 

“We could practice with the blunted blades,” she says. 

Jaime immediately starts jamming his feet into his boots. She suspects he has been very bored.

He picks up a sword only for himself and sets up in the first form she’d taught Pod. She turns on the bed to watch better. He moves back and forth, side to side, holding position, basic footwork. Drilling. 

“There,” he says, dropping the position. “Criticise me.” He looks inappropriately amused; this is definitely somehow a joke. Brienne frowns.

“It looked fine,” she says. 

Jaime says, “Gods this is dull,” and walks in a circle weaving his grip casually on the the sword, blade spinning. He looks at her speculatively for a moment and then turns back to work through a few more basic parry and recovery combinations, gradually escalating in complexity. His grip is light and his elbows are correct. There’s none of the impractical showiness of last night. He hasn’t tightened his outer shirt at the neck. His jacket is finely fitted. Sometimes she wants so much her hands hurt. Brienne decides to watch his footwork. Most of it is reversed. Some of it is strange to her, but it all makes sense and it all looks deliberate. He stops and looks at her again.

“No?” 

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” she says. 

“I _know_ that,” he groans. “Participate, Brienne.”

She gets uncertainly to her feet, crosses the room to pick up the other practice sword. She stands across from him, resigned to the heat she feels. She’s really not happy with this flavour of wanting. She doesn’t trust it. They should fight with swords. Put them down. Then, entirely unrelatedly, they should take each other to bed. 

“Alright, let’s try something else,” he says, and then he starts tugging his boots back off. “Did you never play at fighting when you were a child?” 

“What?” 

He hooks the chair on his elbow and clears the rug. He comes back quickly, working his bare toes into the weave and then shifting about, getting ready. Brienne puts the sword down hurriedly. 

“Really?” she asks, him, as he dances about. It would be less galling if she didn’t think the ridiculousness looked good. This is… sillier. This makes her feel better. 

“Yes,” he says, “I want to do something I might still win.” 

She sighs. He isn’t going to win. He’s going to get flustered and it will distract her and then when he gets stabbed by a raider on Tarth she’s going to feel terribly guilty at all the hours they spent not practicing. She takes him seriously anyway. She does want the sweet flush of victory. 

They circle each other. He’s not brash here, testing occasionally, getting a feel for how she moves. If this was real, she’d let him tire himself out, but it isn’t so she responds in kind, admiring the way he reacts to her. It’s a strange kind of dancing. She hadn’t played like this as a child. 

She gets lost in the rhythm of it, watching the long lines of his feet and the curl of his wrist as he turns his hand about. She blinks it away, focussing on his grin. He’s slow to retreat from her feint. She snags his wrist to yank him forwards. She brings her other hand up to thump him in the chest with the side of her fist. He’s pink already - she knew he would be. If it was real she’d snap his chin back on his neck and that would be the end of it. 

“Alright,” he says, retreating. 

This time he lunges for her quickly. She has his arms, for a moment, but he’s new catch quick in her hands, free with his wrist coming up at her neck. She ducks him, aiming under his ribs with her shoulder, but now his arm is around the back of her neck. He throws his weight towards her. She lets go of his wrist, partly because she doesn’t want to jar it, partly from shock. She falls backwards over his leg. She lies in a pile on the rug. 

“Yes!” He shouts, “Gods, yes!” She glares at the ceiling. “I’m so sorry, Brienne. Are you alright? I didn’t think that would work.” She kicks out his ankle, careful to avoid the delicate joint, careful to distribute the impact, and sits up fast to grab his other leg. It dumps him onto his side. He laughs. 

“Alright,” he says. He doesn’t look flustered now. “Again? I really haven’t done this since I was a small. Did you do this on Tarth?” 

“No,” she says.

He tries to kick her next. He doesn’t put any force behind it, so she’s not sure what the point of it is. He seems to be enjoying himself anyway, and she is beginning to feel a strange bubbling urge to laugh, every time she dances away from his toes. When he aims too high at her hip, she catches his ankle and holds his foot against her leg while he balances precariously, barely pretending to scowl at her. She shifts one foot back, as if she will step away, still holding onto him, and he wobbles desperately, hopping after her. She has to drop his foot to keep from outright laughter. 

Next, she manages to get her arms around him, holding his back to her as he twists away, only escaping long enough for her to grab an arm, twist it behind him and bear him down onto the rug. With a grip on the back of his neck and his gold hand uselessly batting backwards against her ribs, she wins. She puts a knee to the soft curve of his lower back and watches, fascinated, as his face flushes the familiar shade of pink. He laughs breathlessly. 

“This is indecent,” he says. 

She doesn’t disagree. She leans down to press her forehead to the serrated edge of his spine. He swears softly. That’s enough. She doesn’t know what to do next and he’s no help at all, lying there, still except for his heaving sides. 

She sits back, increasingly dismayed, the more distance she gets from him. She can just imagine herself, hulking and red faced, curving over him. She puts her hands into fists, rather than putting her arms around her chest. He rests his forehead against the floor for a moment, and then he comes up beaming. That is until he sees her face. He twists his mouth at her. 

“I thought you wanted-.” She doesn’t not want. She would prefer not to want. This was all very complicated and not like the kinder songs. 

“I don’t want to hurt you. Look for punishment elsewhere,” she snaps. 

“I’m not looking for punishment,” he says, sounding genuinely disgusted. She burns, worse than before. He looks very disheveled as he glares down at his hands. “I’m sorry, Brienne. It’s like with your reading. I can hardly remember beginning.”

“I know things,” she says, offended. He looks up at her. She already told him that her Septa was apparently worse than useless, so she has to admit, “I hear soldiers talk.” He scoffs. 

“Well, most of it will have been nonsense, if it’s any comfort. Did you find any of it particularly inspiring?” She pulls a face to that makes him swallow his smile. “I grew up with those same men and have spun the same lies,” he says. 

“Well?” she says,”What do you know then.” And she waits for him to explain it all to her. The best way to become proficient is to repeat something until your body remembers it, but guidance from others is invaluable. He smooths a hand over his hair and squints at her. “You have no idea what you’re doing either,” she says. 

“Brienne, truly I am a man of the world and you should listen to me.” He gets up and turns away, shaking out his arms. She drags herself to her feet. Surreptitiously she shakes her arms too, in case it helps. 

“Alright,” he says, coming back towards her. She sets her stance, brings her arms up again, still feeling sweaty and red. “No,” he says, “could you show me how you turned me around like that?” She can. She does, dropping him quickly when the manoeuvre is complete. 

“Could I try?” he asks. It’s good he’s given in and accepted the importance of continued drilling. He has it immediately and he only runs through it once more, just to be certain. “Perhaps that’s enough of that,” he says, “ It’s not the middle of the night anymore. Let’s dance.” 

“With swords,” she says, although regrettably she understood him perfectly. He laughs. He’s closing in on her again and she stands there and lets him come. He draws himself up as tall as he can and takes her hand, turning to stand shoulder to shoulder. His grip is warm and tight. He keeps shifting about. 

“By ourselves?” asks Brienne, despairing, as though he is going to produce a party of revellers from the chest. 

“Yes. I’m not sure if this will work. I didn’t do it much,” he says. “At court I mostly liked to mope.” 

“There’s no music,” she tells him; an extraordinary display of common sense in the face of this performance. 

“I’ll sing,” he says. “What songs did you have in Tarth?”

“You can’t sing,” she says, meaning it. She’ll have to kill him, after all the agonies of keeping him alive.

“How can you possibly know that? I’ll have you know that when I was a squire, I was much lauded by the knights for leading songs and,” he doesn’t stop talking as she comes around to stand in front of him. His eyes follow her closely, but his mouth keeps moving. 

“Here,” she says, leaning in to kiss him. He surges up to meet her. She tries to keep a soft mouth. She could shake him, and his breath would come quick, and the heat would rise up into his face. He wouldn’t be worried. He’d smile. 

She tugs at his shirt, and he tips into her, hands at her lower back, one heavier than the other, his chin tilted up, clearly trying to be more careful with his mouth. Then he bites her. 

She is quick and rough with his leathers, dragging them off his shoulders, determined, now she has decided. When he shifts forwards into her, she pushes back against him to feel the grin against her mouth and his laboured breath against her chest. His hands are inside her shirt and tugging at the fastenings at her wrists, but she bats him away to drag his layered shirts over his head. She reaches, helplessly for the angularity of his ribs, the curve of his hips. He reaches up to the back of her neck, still moving backwards.

“It’s so bloody cold. The fire,” he tells her. He loses his footing on the discarded shirts, and Brienne crashes down with him, halting herself painfully on a knee. He looks up at her in unbridled delight and Brienne scowls automatically in response. 

“Embarrassing. We should work on this,” he says and sits up to kiss her again. She holds his smile against her and between her lips until she finds herself unable to stop her mouth curving in answer. He pulls away to grin at her. It’s difficult to be concerned with blushing when he’s meeting her eyes and easing his hand delicately around the healing skin on her calf, the naked honesty of his desire against her. That seems like it should be embarrassing for him, but of course that would never occur to him. He picks open the ties around her waist. The slight upwards press of his hips shudders. He cups her ribs, stroking her sides, a little like she is a horse, then brushing down her stomach. He loosens the neck of her shirt enough to push his face up into the scars reaching down from her neck. 

She should participate. She unlaces him and lets him tug everything down to her thighs, she lets her hand be pulled with his, between her legs, his gliding thumb, firmer and faster, when she presses her fingers over his. Is this quick? She isn’t sure. She sits up, she reaches down to catch his cock against her where they are wet. She holds him, concentrating, mimicking the memory of last night, the catch and the pressure. She rolls into him, through tenderness, driving her body down, faster than he had moved last night. Riding, men call it, maybe women too - she knows plenty of things. She breathes through it, curls away to look down at him. 

He’s pink cheeked and there’s tension in every line of his body, his eyes closed, he drops back on his elbows. She shifts her hips, experimental. Her gasp is audible, touched with her voice. He stutters against her again, his hand hard on her thigh now. She moves again. Prepared this time, to watch it shudder through him, just as it moves through her. Maybe more so. He can’t open his eyes, clearly. Their rhythm stutters. He gets the gold hand awkwardly under him, driving up to meet her, and that’s better, fiercer. His stomach flutters and cramps against her wrist. Against her chest, he makes the first noise she’s heard from him, strained and quickly swallowed. Pain. She knocks him back onto his elbow, to blink down at him, hands on his shoulders. He brushes his knuckles against her stomach again. 

“It’s fine. Come down here then,” he says, voice ragged.

She curls over him to kiss him and then when that becomes impossible, she presses her cheek against him and pushes her nose into his hair. Very gently, she feels him brush the edges of his teeth against her again, between one languorous roll of their hips and the next. She could not bear to do the same. She has to put her palm down for balance. It would be easier to roll her weight back onto her feet, to readjust. Instead she leaves his fingers to their rhythm and laces the other hand through his hair, holding him against her. Pressed everywhere against him there is only the awkward curl of hips keeping up with her, the nearby fire and the rasp of their breathing, the burn of her thighs that travels up her back. She doesn’t have to look for the sparkling pleasure. She grinds down. It rushes up; it drags her under. 

“Brienne, let me go,” he’s saying, quiet and urgent, mouth against her neck and the heel of his palm insistent against her hip. She gasps her way back into clear air. She collapses sideways, sticky and strange without him, letting go of his hair. 

He rolls with her, reaching down for his cock, panting breath still not nearly keeping pace with her thundering heart. He cradles his head on his curled arm, golden hand against his hair. As he moves, the muscles in his arm and chest jump. Brienne watches, wide-eyed. She’s heard endless talk from men about this. It’s always sounded so undignified. A hasty, grubby affair. Jaime’s skin is soft and golden, where it isn’t pinked from exertion and her hands. She’s never seen anyone look cleaner. The sound. Heat licks at her again, unable to look away, though his eyes are pinched shut. The tip of his cock is dark, slick. In his just open mouth, his tongue is pink. She watches her thumb push between his teeth, searching for water. He grazes her again, a happy snarl of teeth and a quick flash of hazy eyes on hers before he tips his chin forwards. She presses her thighs together, strokes his sharp teeth until he chases her thumb away, twisting his neck. She carries on watching until he blinks at her. She’s hot but cooling. 

“Let me just-” he says, and he drags himself up to scrub his hand clean again. 

Sleep curls through her body as her heartbeat fades from her ears. She kicks her legs a little to disperse the work that sits from her thighs to her back. The fire’s heat laps at her skin. The rug scratches her when she flexes the pinching muscles. The slightest curl of cold air reaches for her from under their door. 

He comes back to her, tugging his southern cloak down and laying it over their legs. Hers would be warmer. He lies on his front, pushed up on his elbows, and he fumbles with the straps to his hand. He has to pull hard to get the thing off. Underneath the leather, there is a broad, angry red band around his wrist. He places the hand standing straight up from the ground, and considers it as he rubs at the abrasion.

She watches. He twists onto his back, glancing at her sideways. 

“It’s just compacting pressure. He mimes a punch into his left palm, and then knocks the inside of his severed wrist against the side of the whole one. Backhand is fine.” He stretches and grins. Brienne just touched those teeth. She flushes. “I can show you if you like,” he says. He’d tell her if that was strange. Brienne pretends to scowl.

“I’ll show you,” she says darkly. He looks so pleased. 

“I know you can throw a punch,” he says. And there is the water weight in her chest, rushing back. She sits up. The evening is over. It’s time to sleep. Something terrible occurs to Brienne. 

“Did you eat? Tonight?”

“No,” says Jaime. “It’s fine.” Brienne glares. She hadn’t thought. How could she not have thought? If she had thought of it she’d have assumed Podrick would have come by. 

“It really is fine,” he says. He pushes up to press his lips to hers. “Brienne,” he says, almost into her mouth. 

“What?” she says, still angry with herself.

“I want to say goodbye to my brother.” 

Brienne blinks at him, so close and warm, the queasy addition of guilt to the water in her chest. 

“Do you know where he sleeps?” 

“He’s in the newer tower,” he says. “With the queen’s retinue. I know I’m not supposed to be out there-.” 

“I’ll take you,” she interrupts and she gets up, hitching everything back up around her waist. She starts dressing. Not allowing him to go would be arbitrary cruelty. Sansa’s decree should have sensible limits. Jaime stays down. 

“I don’t like how that went,” he says. 

Brienne pauses in shrugging into her jacket. She watches him stand. If that was manipulation then it’s not something she can guard against, because it’s so alien to her understanding of him. He mostly looks confused by it. She tries not to think about what Sansa would say. _Someone expecting the worst._ The moment in the songs when the distance dissolves and everything else goes with it. 

“Do you want to go or not?” This time they keep quiet in the corridors, Jaime walking a little behind her shoulder, aware that they are doing something they shouldn’t. The incompetent guard posted by the hole in the wall ignores them as they make their way across the second courtyard. Brienne does not look at the Sept. 

Tyrion himself answers Jaime’s soft knock, and he holds his finger to his lips. Pod is asleep at the table.

“Ser Brienne,” Tyrion says. “Stay for a drink. My preferred guest passed out without partaking.” 

That’s a succinct way of insulting both her and Jaime while letting her know that Pod isn’t drunk. She can appreciate it abstractly.

“I’ll see you before first light,” she says, to see Jaime swallow a laugh at Tyrion’s disgust. As if Tyrion doesn’t have to be up then anyway. 

“Goodnight,” Jaime says, and Brienne hurries away before Tyrion can say something terrible about his tone and the way his eyes are warm and quiet. 

It’s strange to be alone again at night. It’s colder. She wakes twice, thinking the bed is weighted by a body beside her. Remembering how heavy the dead are. She drifts again easily enough. She’s practiced at sleeping alone.

***

Jaime drops to one knee to embrace Tyrion in the empty great hall, lit only by fire-light. He pulls away quickly to smooth Tyrion’s hair back from face, tucking it behind his ears where it has grown longer than Jaime’s. Tyrion tolerates this silently. 

“Try to get along with Aunt Genna,” says Jaime, sitting back and thumping him on the shoulder.

Tyrion says, “I am a diplomat now.” 

“She really won’t hold it against you,” says Jaime. Tyrion’s laughter is painful. “She loved him, but she wasn’t blind to the way he was.”

Tyrion echoes, “ _The way he was._ ” with some real amusement. “Gods, it’s going to be fucking awful,” he says, “hopefully Tully has died and there will be no one to object if I pack her and her Frey husband off to the Twins.” 

Brienne strongly disapproves of this sentiment, but Jaime smiles at Tyrion, with teeth, big and beaming. It looks completely genuine. Brienne hadn’t known that was a possibility here in Winterfell. She covets it, suddenly. 

“She’ll be useful to you. She’ll respect that you want to be there,” says Jaime and he produces a purse clicking with what Brienne suspects represents every bit of money he has. He’d only added loose coin from the bottom of his saddle bags to it when he was fiddling about with it last night.

“Oh no,” says Tyrion. “No, I told you. I’ve given up money.” 

Jaime holds it out until he takes it.

“The freedoms that independent wealth brings,” Tyrion says. It’s not that heavy a purse. He grabs at Jaime again, falling into him and crushing his face into his shoulder. Jaime rocks them jerkily with his eyes screwed tight. Brienne looks down at them, experiencing some terrible transference of unfamiliar pain. Her father isn’t writing back. 

They stage another little farewell out in the freezing courtyard in front of Tyrion’s southern soldiers. It’s snowing again, dreamy snowflakes that melt away as soon as they touch Brienne’s shoulders and that catch in the breaking morning light. Jaime drops to the wet ground to embrace Tyrion, quickly but just as fiercely. He kisses Tyrion’s hand and his cheek, old fashioned manners. Then he takes off to walk through the milling ranks of southern men. A few of them have acquired appropriately warm gear. The rest are going to be very cold, but they’re eager to go. Some of them are glancing up nervously. If the light is coming, then the dragons should be here too. Brienne watches Jaime. He spends a long time with two silver-haired men near the front of the undisciplined formation. They are among those who have been given horses, and one of them reaches out to clap Jaime on the shoulder. He wanders further back. The men turn to him, seeking approval, seeking attention and he gives it, somehow engaged but removed. Sansa has the same trick. Brienne thinks she was still holding herself too tightly with them, before the battle. 

On the other side of the courtyard, Sansa and Jon are going through the motions of saying goodbye to the Bear Islanders. The group is small enough that it makes Brienne feel desperately sad. She understands why they would want to go home. She looks away. Gendry and the queen are watching from the walkway. Gendry is looking back at her. 

“He was always good at this part; good with the men,” Tyrion says, still watching Jaime, “but I’ll be better with the Rock.” Brienne examines him. He has his hands balled into fists. “I do believe that,” he says. 

Brienne considers Jaime, tall and easy to pick out in the mass of men. She imagines him sat in a grand office day after day, year after year, dealing with the endless anonymous problems of a great house and all the grand scope of its peoples and lands. Jaime had said Tyrion wanted that. 

“You’ll be better,” she tells Tyrion. 

Tyrion turns up to her, the gratitude on his face quickly sliding behind a grin.

“I always did like you, ser,” he says. Brienne chooses not to reply. 

The dragons start up, which seems to delight Tyrion. Brienne hunches her shoulders and endures. 

Out in the press of men, Jaime glances back at her, just for a moment. Tyrion spots it; of course he does. 

“What do you two talk about holed up in that room of yours?” he says, and she hopes her face is too flushed from the cold to give her away. She had just assumed that Jaime had told him. Tyrion is still looking out at his men. “Tourneys legend and exciting advances in mace wielding technique?” he prompts teasingly. 

Then he looks up at her again, and she sees when he reads it on her face. She looks away, steeling herself for whatever jibe he is concocting.

“My lady,” he begins, so much softer than she expects, and then waits until she meets his eyes again, “Take something for yourself and keep him safe for me while you’re at it.” 

Brienne can’t formulate a response. She doesn’t need his permission. It’s what she almost has. Possession and safety. Selfish desire. Certainly nothing on Tyrion’s account. 

“Look after yourself, my lord,” she says, as is proper — sincerely and sincerely hoping to put an end to the conversation. Tyrion smiles at her with authentic crookedness.

Jaime picks out a wiry young man with scrupulously clean gear under a thick northern cloak. He has tidy red hair and a fading black eye. Jaime brings him back to Tyrion. Tyrion accepts this tribute with minimal interest and sends the boy off for his mounting block from the wagons. He moves forwards, trying to draw the attention of a couple of the men. 

“He likes to pick a strange one to talk at,” says Jaime, lowly in explanation to Brienne, “I thought I’d save him some time.” 

“He looks a little small to be useful,” says Brienne, eyeing the boy’s diminutive, retreating form. She indicates her eye where the boy is bruised, “and a troublemaker, too.” 

“No, it’s a moving tale. Tyrion likes the sorry ones. And I saw that one kill a mounted Dothraki horse from the ground,” Brienne looks back at the boy with renewed interest, “Sticks in the memory.”

Pod comes back with the mounting block, clutching it fiercely and leading Tyrion’s unusually saddled horse, even though the new boy is following along and scowling behind him. 

Tyrion’s party has wagons full of what Sansa probably couldn’t spare and a man to look after a few ravens. He has Sansa’s words with him, the queen’s words, Jaime’s and all the reassurance of his aunt will surely follow. He has under three hundred men. He’ll need everything to go right, but he’s been lucky before. 

He rides out to the front of the assembled men, and Brienne does feel for him. It won’t be safe to stay on horseback, despite all his preparation, not with the ground covered beyond the edges of the camp. He’ll have to sit on one of the carts. The men stare back at him doubtfully, more than a few of them keep looking to Jaime. Men have looked at her that way. 

“Let’s all go home!” Tyrion shouts into the snow dampened courtyard, and suddenly, at least for this moment, they’re his. Even the Bear Islanders shift in interest. He makes a bow up to the walkway at the back of the courtyard, and Brienne turns to see Jon, Sansa, and the queen all assembled to see him off. Tyrion smirks at Jaime all the way through the gate. It’s a long way to where they will be met by the Iron Islanders. Some of the men still look mournfully at Jaime as they pass by, but there is already the scattered beginning of a marching song. 

Jaime watches until the last of the men are gone, the few wagons creaking slowly out through the main gate. The bustle in the castle is hardly diminished around them. As the men file out more flood into the courtyard and wagons that had been cleared aside are dragged back out again. Jon Snow is already amongst the men. He’ll be leaving next. 

“Well. What now?” says Jaime. Pod has finished all the mending and everything they own is clean and sharp.

“I still have jobs with the saddle maker,” says Pod, finally turning his eyes away from the gate. “I don’t know about you.”

***

They get out of the way, walking up onto the deserted ramparts at Jaime’s request. From up here, Tyrion’s party is becoming smaller and less impressive by the moment as it weaves through the encampments around the castle walls. None of the other men had mounted their horses. Their progress is slow. The wind whips the snow into Brienne’s face and whines past the towers. 

When Tyrion gets to the last tent and sets out into the fresh snow without dismounting, Jaime pulls his cloak around himself and turns his back to the wind, watching her instead. It’s warming, at least to her. His nose and cheeks have pinked up in the wind. He crouches down with his back against the parapet, out of the worst. The stones are too wetly icy to sit down. 

“How long did it take you to become accustomed to this cold?” 

“I’m not sure anyone gets used to it,” she says, “I just acquired warmer clothes.” 

He nods at this like it’s a jewelled wisdom he’s grateful to have received from her. After a moment more of stoically enduring the flurries of snow, she joins him, gathering her massive quantities of fur and the awkward length of Oathkeeper out of the way before she crouches. They press together, shivering, listening to the tumultuous carrying on of men on both sides of the walls. Jaime tucks his hands under his arms. 

“How do you think that southern boy just now got hold of a cloak like yours? Do you think he took it from someone who died in the battle? He turned the question I almost asked aside.” Brienne thinks that sounds very likely.

“I’ll ask Sansa for one.” Jaime grimaces. 

“You probably shouldn’t do that, Brienne,” he says. 

She’ll do what she likes. 

“I should take you back,” she says, apologetically. But neither of them actually move. 

“Nice face,” calls a man’s nasal little voice, almost snatched away on the wind. 

Brienne starts into weary insult, assuming it’s aimed at her. She looks up to find Sansa’s spy leaning on the inner wall, looking across at the two of them. He does seem used to the cold, his furs lying loosely on his shoulders. He’s looking at Jaime. Brienne doesn’t know what to do with that. She’d decided they shouldn’t grab him. 

“Thank you,” says Jaime. “But whatever you’re offering, I don’t have any money.” Brienne turns to glare at him.

“I’m not soliciting,” the boy says, voice drenched in amusement. “I’m threatening.” 

Jaime settles his arms on his knees, leaning back into the wall.

“Well, have another go?” 

The boy smiles. 

“If you’re sure,” he says. 

He reaches up to put his nails to his hairline. Brienne surges to her feet, hearing the noise she makes as though she is underwater. 

Arya holds the boy’s thin, dead skin casually between her fingers. She doesn’t take her eyes off Jaime.

“Nice face. _Useful face,_ ” she says. Brienne looks down at Jaime. He’s blank-faced and calm. Gone away. “This one died in the battle,” she says, “I didn’t want them all to go to waste.” 

“Arya…” she breathes. 

She doesn’t know what to say, but Arya doesn’t look at her anyway. It takes Jaime a while to speak again. Arya looks down at him hungrily the whole time. 

“That would be an unconscionably cruel thing to do to her,” Jaime says, voice liquid.

“Unjust?” Arya says curiously, “To Cersei? Really?”

“Unnecessary.” 

Arya pushes it - the skin - down the front of her jerkin. It shudders through Brienne as the ripping motion had. Arya leans in.

“I’m not going to do it like that,” says Arya, “because of Brienne. You’d do well to remember that.”

“Arya,” she repeats, trying to swallow her horror, “this isn’t helpful.” 

Arya frowns up at her. Then, quite clearly, so that even Brienne can hear it over the sound of tens of thousands of men, there is a wolf howling somewhere in the distance. Arya tracks the sound, turning her head, her eyes narrow and unseeing. Another call goes up; she turns towards it. Jaime is looking up at Arya, curiosity making his face a little more human, puzzled at her distraction.

“I’ll remember, Arya Stark,” says Jaime. 

“Valar dohaeris,” Arya says to him, briefly giving him her attention again. “Your choice was lucky. Let it stay that way.” To Brienne, she says, “We’ll spar again sometime,” grinning like she knows this is incongruous. Then she takes off, purposeful in a new direction. Brienne watches her flit out of sight, into the nearest tower and away down the stairs. 

Helpless, she sits down next to Jaime, never mind about the dirt and melting snow on her cloak. Jaime shuffles to push their shoulders back together. Then he reaches down to grab her hand. Brienne’s stomach is rolling like she’s on the deck of a delicate skiff in a thick storm. 

“I do need to speak to Sansa,” Jaime says, “Only for a moment.” 

“There’s no use complaining to Sansa about it,” Brienne tells him and regrets it immediately. He snatches his hand away and stands, glaring down at her, clearly hurt by the assumption. 

“I don’t want to tell tales,” he says. He flinches from a particularly sharp gust of snow. “Can we walk outside for a little while, Brienne. Or , _ride._ Can we ride?” He’s looking out above where the trees begin, where the hills roll away from them. “I don’t think I can go and wait by the fire again quite yet. I can. But not quite yet.” 

She takes in his unhappiness. She tries to decide if she’s relieved to see it so openly. She hadn’t meant to insult him.

“If we go back to the room I can ask Pod to walk with you, if you need some time,” she tells him. 

“No. If Sansa doesn’t need you, I can hang on your arm.”

Brienne flushes, uncomfortable with that. She glares down at the grey flagstones. He drops heavily into a crouch in front of her and tries to turn her face back up to him. His gold hand bounces clumsily off her jaw, a gentle fumble cushioned by his gloves. 

“I don’t know why I said that,” he says. “You never hurt me.” It would have wounded her at some amorphous time in the past that isn’t now. Now, it burns differently. The embarrassment means something else. 

When she looks up at him, he looks tired again, slouching like a paper puppet left out in the rain. She doesn’t like to see him defeated and she doesn’t want to defeat him. She reaches out to pull his wrist, very gently, into her hand. It’s a question, she supposes. She shifts her grip so she can lift his arm awkwardly into the air. He lets her, although his eyes flicker confusedly over her face before clearing into a speculative kind of amusement. It’s an answer of sorts, she supposes. He’s not worried. He doesn’t tense. Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to him. She doesn’t understand where the _playing at being a prisoner_ comment came from if that is really the case. She left him alone with no food and old washing water. He’s not wearing his sword. 

“That’s one of the most revolting things I’ve ever seen a living person do,” he tells her, his arm hanging loosely between them, still in her grasp. “Terrifying, quite honestly. You didn’t know she could…” he gestures with the gloved gold hand, without words for what Arya can do. 

Brienne doesn’t have words for it either. It makes sense of how Arya was able to kill all those Freys alone. She supposes that if someone has to have that skill, she’s glad it’s Arya. She doesn’t have anything to say about it. She strokes at his wrist with her thumb.

“I suppose I could suffer being seen with you on my arm,” she says, and then she folds his hand properly into hers and tugs it in, quickly pressing a kiss to his knuckles. She hopes the castle will feel less suffocating when the men making all this noise have gone. 

Jaime’s eyes light up. He glances back and forth along the empty ramparts and leans in to kiss the side of her mouth. 

“Come on,” he says, patting her thigh encouragingly and standing up, “It’s awful up on these walls. Why did you bring us up here?”

While she beats out her cloak and repositions her sword belt, he leans against the parapet to look out again after Tyrion who must well over the second hill and out of sight by now. 

“Isn’t it nice that Arya Stark has given us her blessing,” he says, bemusedly, voice almost snatched away. 

Then his face sharpens. She whirls and narrows her own eyes against the wind. At least the snow has stopped again. There are two men running in at a fair clip, already past the edges of the camp. One of them is leading a horse. The other, Brienne realises with a start, has the distinctive red hair of the young man Jaime had picked out for Tyrion. 

“Is that Bronn?” says Jaime. 

Brienne squints at the dark-haired rider. They both tilt their heads to listen to the howling, carried to them in a brief break in the wind. Jaime shifts nervously. 

“That wolf of Snow’s is nearly as bad the dragons,” he says, feigning disinterest while he’s still unsure, but he grabs her belt and starts walking them towards the nearest tower. By the time they reach the bottom of the stairs, they’re both running. 

“My lady. Ser. Er-,” calls the guard on the gate as they approach. He’s a tall, decent, dull fellow from the castle guard, who Brienne had interviewed for Sansa. He clearly doesn’t remember her name. Then, noticing Jaime coming towards him at some speed, his expression shifts to alarm. 

“Just you wait there a moment, ser,” he says. “I mean, Jai-. Jai-.” he doesn’t seem to be able to push the informality past his teeth, working his hands around in circles by his side. 

“Kingslayer! Please come back here,” he pleads as Jaime tears straight past him. The queen hadn’t technically stripped Jaime of that title Brienne supposes. Brienne slows to reassure the poor man. 

“Do get a grip, Harlon. Stay at your post.” Then she lengthens he stride to catch up. 

It feels good to run. Brienne feels so light-footed without her clanking armour. It will be terrible trouble for Sansa’s plans if Tyrion has managed to get himself eaten by wolves as soon as he was out of sight of the castle, but they categorically can’t make Jaime go in his place now. Jaime had said there was a positive plague of distant cousins. The cold air tears down her throat and a long graze on her calf pulls with every stride. Maybe she’ll have to fight Bronn. On the one hand, it will be something to do other than pick out slightly less stupid men, on the other, it will really be rather a lot of trouble by all accounts.

“Where’s my brother?” shouts Jaime as Brienne catches him. “You, boy. Where’s Lord Tyrion?” 

The young man opens his mouth in speechless outrage. 

“He’s just over those hills, holding forth to anyone who will listen,” calls Bronn. “Don’t get so excited.” 

Brienne tries to dig her heels into the slippery, partially frozen mud of the path and stumbles out of her sprint. Jaime slides and slithers to a more gradual halt. 

“Good,” he pants. ‘Well done. Are you alright to go back alone?” he asks the boy. “Ser Brienne could find you a couple of men to go with you. There are wolves about.” Brienne will likely not be able to find him men. She’d have to ask Sansa or Jon Snow.

“I’m not scared of wolves,” the boy says. “Lord Tyrion said to deliver Ser Bronn back past the Dothraki’s guards. He told me to do it and come back quick.” 

Then he wheels around and stomps away, back into the wind. Bronn is already speaking. 

“You’re a sight for sore eyes, I’ve been on the road from King’s Landing nearly fifty nights.” Brienne scowls down at him. “I took a slightly circuitous route. I am surprised to see you wandering about unchecked,” - this is directed at Jaime - “I’ll tell you that. But I hear you vanquished the army of the dead. Everyone south of the neck thinks it’s all a Stark conspiracy, just so you know. But it’s wonderful news. Never a doubt in my mind.” He adds,“I have useful reports from the city.”

“Which city?” says Brienne, because she is feeling churlish. Then she speaks over his answer, because she really doesn’t need to be told. “I’ll find Lady Sansa,” says Brienne to Jaime. “Don’t let him too far into the castle. Or, I’ll find the queen or Jon Snow,” she adds guiltily a moment later.

“Please remind that guard that he doesn’t need to call for reinforcements,” says Jaime. He needn’t worry. Harlon the guard isn’t going to have the wherewithal to call for anything. 

Brienne finds Sansa in her private rooms, a cluster of women, two of them wildlings, sat around her desk. Sansa says delicately, “Brienne, can I help you?”

“A Lannister sellsword is here saying he has news from King’s Landing,” Brienne says. 

Sansa sighs and stands. The northern women stand with her. One wildling stays seated, the other stands part way and then awkwardly lowers herself again when the other raises her eyebrows. 

“Jon just left by the Hunter’s Gate. Who is he with now? How good a sellsword?”

“I could almost certainly take him,” Brienne says, “Jaime and the guard posted to the main gate are with him.” Sansa’s mouth tightens. Brienne remembers that Jaime is not supposed to be as far as the main gate. The trouble is, Brienne is no longer sure _why_ and that’s making it difficult to enforce. 

Sansa says, “I’ll try to have the Queen found if she’s still inside the castle. Perhaps it would be best if you hurried back.” Brienne flushes. She can see that Jaime and Harlon don’t make a particularly reliable sounding pair in this particular instance. 

“Right away, my lady,” she says. Sansa sighs again, and all the women sitting around the desk with her shake their heads in sympathy.

“What friendship? Neither of us has any friends.” Bronn’s voice carries loudly out from the Gate House, where Harlon has tucked them away next to a hearty fire. Now no one is watching the gate. She shoos him back out. 

Bronn calls, “Hello, Podrick Payne!” when they enter, looking delighted. Brienne ran into Pod hanging around dejectedly in the courtyard and brought him along in case he wanted to see an old friend, but apparently she needn’t have bothered. Bronn looks Brienne up and down and opens his mouth, then visibly reconsiders. 

“Hello again, Lady Brienne,” says Bronn, with a polite nod. She wishes he would look less amused by everything. Jaime is amused by very slightly fewer things and that’s now more than fine. She is aware of her own inconstancies. 

“Ser Brienne,” she corrects, trying to keep how pleasing that is from her voice. 

Jaime puffs up as well and turns to smile at her brilliantly and with something she has no choice but to interpret as adoration. For some reason, Bronn turns immediately and triumphantly to Pod, who only stares blankly back. 

“Bronn was paid to come and kill Tyrion and I,” Jaime tells them. 

_“Ser Bronn,”_ says Bronn patiently, _“was partially paid…”_

“Oh,” says Pod, “Lord Tyrion’s only just left. You’ve missed him.” 

“Yes. Lord of Casterly Rock again, lucky little bugger. I ran into your Lannister men on the road, and I hid, but that weaselly red headed one spotted me. Qyburn gave me a crossbow to kill you both so I could have got his nibs if I’d spotted him a little earlier, but I didn’t, and besides that, I sold the crossbow before I left the city. Beautifully made thing. Bloody heavy though.”

Brienne observes this outpouring with distaste. 

“What’s with that maester who isn’t a maester and all his fucking projectiles anyway. Did you tell them about the truly obsessive number of scorpions he’s building?”

“Yes, ser,” says Jaime, pretending not to enjoy himself. Bronn’s eyebrows jump and drags his chair in closer. 

“You’re much improved, you are. Well done, Ser Brienne. That’s lovely. Say it again.” Brienne clears her throat. He’d helped Jaime learn to fight again. She should be polite. 

“Ser Bronn, who paid you to kill Jaime?” 

“And Lord Tyrion,” Pod adds. 

Jaime sits back in his chair and crosses one ankle nonchalantly over the other. Then he crosses his arms too. Brienne looks between them. Oh, of course: Cersei. Bronn pulls a comically exaggerated grimace. Brienne doesn’t think this is particularly funny. 

“So, Podrick, have you been knighted as well?” Brienne does think he is a most objectionable man. 

She leaves to wait outside under the thick stone arc of the main gate with Harlon, who has become distracted chatting with a woman who has brought him a warm bowl of something. Brienne stands at attention - even if Harlon doesn’t - and observes the pair until the woman catches her looking and scuttles away. Harlon starts standing on one leg and inspecting the sole of his boot, unconcerned by her observation, still eating. The other guards had almost universally been mean spirited and inflated with petty power, but this man isn’t even looking at the passing throngs. Women carry covered baskets back and forth. Not that Brienne ever wants to catch another thief. 

Jaime comes out to stand next to her, immediately huddling back into his cloak and bundling himself back against the wall. She lets him alone. Not sure what she can say to comfort him in this instance. Interest in Jaime does seem to have been renewed by the publicly issued denouncement, but it’s an idle interest, subsumed by the work of getting thousands of men ready to leave. They look at him and their eyes for once, slide right over her. Although, with the Free Folk about, Brienne is less of an oddity anyway. Jaime either doesn’t notice or doesn’t particularly care about the curious looks; he glances at her briefly and twists his mouth unhappily. 

“The south does not believe after all,” he says. “There will be no convincing them now.” Brienne observes his sulking profile. She had thought he was upset by his sister’s attempted fratricide. Jaime hits the side of his fist against the wall. Brienne has been turning it over in her mind too. “Oh well,” he says. “It’s always a mistake to expect thanks.” 

“You didn’t do it for thanks,” Brienne says. Jaime hits his hand on the wall again and shuts his eyes. 

Harlon wanders back over to them, slurping gravy from his bowl, steam curling up and making his face shiny. 

“That was the most exciting thing to happen in an age,” he says. It’s is such an absurd statement that it seems to snap Jaime out of his glumness. They stare at Harlon, amazed. The walls were overrun by walking corpses just ten nights past. He can’t possibly have forgotten. Jaime turns away, hiding the beginnings of laughter. She feels that perhaps it is too cruel to send such a man south, but he is clearly monstrously unfit to guard Sansa. 

Sansa arrives with Clegane and a severe collection of unsullied men who all have new fur sticking out of the tops of their boots. The russet and rabbit-brown colours are a strange disruption of their austere uniformity. Clegane brushes past them into the Gate House when Brienne indicates. Sansa is looking tiredly at Harlon who is attempting to hide his bowl behind his back and fade into the grey walls. She tips an eyebrow at Brienne. Harlon will have to go south. 

Clegane herds Bronn out, having confiscated his sword belt. Brienne should have taken his sword belt. 

Bronn sees the wolf head peering over Sansa’s shoulder and says, _“Fucking hell.”_ Sansa tries very hard not to look pleased with herself, but Brienne can tell she’s preening a little by the way she tips her face into the wolf’s fur. Clegane shakes him about a little by his twisted arm. 

Bronn corrects himself. “Hello, Lady Sansa,” he says with a surprisingly respectful little bow of his head. Then he turns to Jaime, slapping him on the shoulder heartily. “You needn’t worry about Tyrion; I’ll be riding off out after him when I’m done here.” Jaime tries to incline his head to both Sansa and Bronn at once. The effect causes Sansa’s eyes to skitter over him and back to Brienne. 

“Oh, will you,” Clegane grumbles, dragging Bronn back again. “Where are we taking him?”

“He’s a useful man,” says Jaime. Everyone ignores him. 

“We’ll be visiting the Queen out in her tents,” Sansa says, and she sails off, her dress dragging along the ice with the unsullied flanking her and Clegane trying to make it look as though he is manhandling a completely unresisting Bronn along behind. 

Jaime says, “Good double act,” and watches them go. Pod wanders over to stand shoulder to shoulder with him. “Should we go back?” he asks. 

Brienne turns to them; they both look up at her, waiting. She jerks her head significantly away from Harlon, and they all shuffle out of immediate hearing range, Jaime looking deeply entertained by the subterfuge. 

“We’re going to find Sansa some better guards,” says Brienne. “I found seven yesterday. That’s not nearly enough.” 

Jaime stares at her. 

“I absolutely shouldn’t be involved in that,” he says. _“Brienne.”_ Brienne ignores him. Sansa had said no southern men. But Brienne has had the thought that perhaps, if he stays at Winterfell for a while, he could join. She will concede that it is not yet appropriate. 

“Well, do you want to go back and mope around in bed?” she says.

***

She’s more than doubled her collection of likely men before there is any trouble at all. Pod is very useful; he knows more of the men by name than Brienne, and certainly more of the men who aren’t technically Royce’s. They’d been good to her, or as good as she could have hoped, but equipping Winterfell with a guard entirely from the Vale seems foolhardy. 

Jaime stands silently at her shoulder or by various doors, looking like he’s pretending very hard not to hear anything being said. She still needs more men, and is down to the last four candidates their collective could come up with, when the current guard crashes onto the scene. 

A man slams into the wrecked tower room they are currently in and shouts “Out!” at the current prospect. The prospect runs away, which immediately disqualifies him. Brienne sizes the guard up. She can’t remember his name, but she knows she does not like him. He has his hand clenched on the pommel of his sword; as she had assessed, he is a dangerous fool. 

Brienne says, “Lady Sansa has asked me-.”

“It’s not your fucking place!” the man shouts, coming so close that it’s truly moronic. She could put him down easily, but then he’ll be a problem for Sansa, wandering around with stories of injustice carried out in her name. He veers wildly away. The man has brought an audience, she notices, gathering by the door. 

“We won’t have it,” he says, even though the other men are only peering in worriedly. “And I’ll be damned if I march off to die in the south while boys from the Vale sit pretty in Winterfell-. ” Pod heads towards the men at the door with his most amiable face on. 

“Get out of here,” she says, “I’ll not say it again.” 

“You southern bitch,” says the man. She re-considers hitting him. But would that be authority humiliating an underling, or a woman humiliating herself? She no longer has command over a system that could see him whipped and he has to march soon, like he says, and swing a sword for Jon Snow. She could grab him by the scruff of his neck and throw him out. Except she thinks he would bounce back at her. Jaime wanders a little closer. She rolls her eyes at him. The man crowds in close again. He puts his finger in her face. 

“You bear fucking freak.” So that story is going about. She cannot slap him. 

Brienne says, “Consider what you are doing,” and finally, reluctantly, puts her hand on Oathkeeper; just as a reminder. 

The man actually tries to draw his sword. 

Jaime grabs him by his sword hand, throws his weight so the man hits the floor on his back and punches him with his right. The man’s face thuds dully and neatly. He makes a familiar choking noise. Jaime pops up, turning his back - he has a sword at least - and says, “Fuck,” tucking his left wrist under his right arm. 

“Fuck!” echoes the man, twisting like an a landed fish. “You’re both fucking dead!” His nose is gushing profusely. It makes his speech difficult to follow. 

“He was asked to leave,” says Pod mildly, to their audience. Jaime throws the sword down at Brienne’s feet and heads back over there. The man scrabbles backwards. 

“Dead. Your sister too,” he slurs, braver than he looks. “If I have to go south I’m killing her myself.“ 

Jaime stops. He holds his arms out away from his bare belt, and says, “Who’s dead? Jaime Lannister?” which makes him sound positively insane. 

“I’ll get Jon Snow down here and then we’ll...” 

“Both of you shut up,” says Brienne. The man looks triumphantly at Jaime, pleased to have got someone else into trouble with him. He scrabbles up onto his knees, then his feet, spitting blood. 

“Jon Snow will-.” 

“He’ll what?” says Brienne. “Very well, I’ll find you Lady Sansa. I’m sure she has nothing better to do,” and she turns to the door. 

“Wait,” says the man, spitting again. “Wait.” He won’t look at her when she hands him his sword. He shoulders through the onlookers he brought, shrugging of worried hands. Brienne checks the stairwell, tells the three prospective guards who promisingly haven’t fled to wait and shuts the door. 

“Nice bluff,” says Jaime. “Thank you.” Brienne ignores him. It was like for like, by her count. 

“We should move,” she says. 

Pod widens his eyes. “That was wild enough that he won’t tell anyone, I’m sure.” 

Brienne thinks it’s prudent to assume the worst. Shame sits and festers in a man like that. At least he won’t have to say that a woman that hit him. 

“Maybe somewhere more public,” Jaime says. “I’m happy to do it again.” She eyes him dubiously. It had worked. It had been useful. She hadn’t brought him along for that. 

He stays at her shoulder all the way down the stairs and across the courtyard, back to being a silent bodyguard again. 

“Stop it,” she murmurs, when he comes to a halt just behind her at the brazier she’s picked out for it’s isolation. She surveys the three bundled men who have followed her. 

She tries talking to them all together. They all seem adequate. 

“Two, I’m not stupid. Ser,” says the youngest, in response to the question of how many men should be at each post, so he’s already better than most of the current crop. The little daylight they had is slipping away from her. Soon it will be time for the dragons again. 

Podrick says, “My lady?”

“What,” she snaps. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she spots the incoming Tormund. Podrick’s mouth tightens in sympathy. Jaime is standing slightly apart, closer to the flames in his too light cloak, silent and fallen back into brooding again. His head snaps up as soon as she looks at him. He follows her flicking her eyes and spots Tormund approaching. If anything he looks cheered. Brienne supposes that last time he saw the man, he came out with that story about milk. 

Tormund calls out to her: “We’re hunting again. Want to come with us? I could teach you-.” 

“I’m busy.” Her voice is loud and carrying. It’s more awkward than if she’d let him finish. Brienne glances at the northern men and finds them all watching avidly, except one who is averting his eyes. She feels a surge of gratitude to this one man and his very large eyebrows.

“You’ll enjoy yourself,” Tormund promises, “Once, when I was hunting beyond the wall I-.”

“Would any of the Free Folk remaining in Winterfell be willing to join the castle guard?” Brienne cuts through. “They would have to be vetted by Lady Sansa, of course.” Tormund stops to frown, digging a gloved hand into his beard. 

“There’s some that would be suited,” he says. “The Free Folk will do our part.”

“Are there any women suitable?” Brienne asks. She likes looking at the wildling lines and seeing the weathered women with their weapons on their backs.

“Maybe. I can ask.” He says, “You want women?” He’s frowning, considering. He raises one eyebrow and leans in. “Would you go hunting with a woman?” He eyes Jaime again, who blinks down at him pleasantly. Brienne wishes Tormund would stop coming back around to the same question. 

“If you could send them to me by tonight,” she says gruffly, “Lady Sansa will appreciate your aid in this matter.” 

“It’s not Lady Sansa whose appreciation I would-”

“My lord, your hunting party is waiting,” says Podrick. 

“I’m no more a lord than you are,” says Tormund, insulted, “but,” he adds significantly, looking back at Jaime, “I could shave off my warm beard and spend all day sitting in the hot springs getting pink and pretty if I didn’t have better things to do.” Jaime flashes all his teeth.

“I’m flattered that you think of me so-”

Brienne says loudly over him, “I’d appreciate it if you’d go and get on with those better things. Thank you.”

“They really are going,” says Pod, “look.” Tormund looks out of the corner of her eye. He shakes his head sadly.

“This would never have happen beyond the wall. But I don’t need to be told twice,” he says, beginning to retreat. “I’ll send you the best women. The best men.”

“Wonderful,” says Jaime and Tormund pivots to glare at him, walking backwards. 

“When we all walk out of this castle, up on snow that’s above these little walls here, then we’ll see who can provide a-”

“I’ll look forward to your guidance, my lord,” calls Jaime. 

Brienne can hear Tormund muttering, “Prissy, southern idiot.”

“They used to raid our village,” says the man who averted his eyes. His enormous eyebrows are draw down. “I don’t know how you can ask us to stand alongside some wildling girls. Dirty like that but a woman. I have my dignity.”

“You’re dismissed then,” snaps Brienne, “You’ll be marching south.” The man gapes. He’d been respectful towards her. To have misjudged him so stings. He stomps away, throwing angry looks over his shoulder. Good riddance.

“Tormund Giant’s-milk,” says Jaime. “What a man. Did you believe all that? Tyrion swore to me later that he believed it, but I think he was teasing.” 

“I’ve heard stranger things that turned out to be true,” says Pod. 

The two men remaining at the fire nod glumly. Perhaps the whole castle has been treated to the story. 

Brienne says. “Thank you. Lady Sansa will see you soon and she will want to thank you herself.”

***

“Try it,” says Jaime, stepping forwards, bringing up his sword. Pod steps forwards determinedly and the swords clash and then scrape, when Pod starts forcing Jaime’s sword down, two handed grip against one. Jaime twists his sword around and above and Pod looses his advantage and has to hop backwards sharply. 

“No,” says Brienne, from the end of the bed, “again.” 

They run it twice more. Pod manages to press his advantage both times. Batting Jaime’s sword this way or that, as he runs repeatedly through the same parry. The scrape of steel is uneven, pitted edge against pitted edge.

“Good,” says Brienne, “again.” 

Pod’s sword catches on Jaime’s, he keeps his advantage, the sword skitters, catches on the broken edge and bounces, clipping Jaime’s chin as he jerks backwards. 

“My lord!” says Pod, dropping his sword and stepping forwards. “Gods, I’m sorry.” Brienne fists the furs she is sitting on. Jaime is already huffing out a little laugh, pressing the back of his hand to the underside of his chin. 

“Are you alright?” Brienne asks.

“Yes,” says Jaime. “He barely touched me.” 

“I didn’t mean to…” says Pod.

“Well maybe one day you’ll be good enough to do it on purpose,” Jaime says. He sticks his sword under his right arm and pokes at his face, checking a finger for blood. “Or better yet good enough to not do it at all.”

“Accidents are inevitable,” says Brienne to Pod. “This is why we train with blunted swords. This is a good sign.” She’s not entirely sure that it is - it’s certainly not a negative reflection on his abilities - but she wants to soothe the distress from his face. 

“Oh yes, fantastic,” says Jaime. “Again?” Pod slides his eyes back to Brienne. She can see the lurking shadow of the exhaustion she’d seen in those first days after, even though, by his own admission, he’d found nothing to do today. 

“No,” she says. Pod tidies the sword and pulls the chair back to its place by the fire.

“Podrick…” says Jaime. 

“I know I shouldn’t call you ‘my lord,’” says Pod. 

Jaime holds the sword out to him by the blunted length. Pod grabs the grip, and while he puts it neatly in the corner, Jaime tugs his boots off and unties his jacket and climbs past Brienne onto the bed. 

“I’m going to sleep then,” Jaime says, which seems quite final. 

Pod comes to sit besides Brienne, carefully avoidant of Jaime’s extended feet. 

“I’m glad you think I’m improving,” he says, which isn’t what Brienne had said, but does reflect what she thinks. 

“You’re a good swordsman,” she says. “You’ve been a good squire, Podrick.” Pod turns towards her. 

“I am still your squire, my lady” he says, mimicking her suddenly formal tone with gentle teasing.

“I had hoped the queen would find time to knight you,” she says, and she misses his reaction, because Jaime kicks her. Or, he digs his toes suddenly into the small of his back. She jumps and turns about to glare. “Jaime would have done it,” she says to Pod. Pod looks down, pursing his lips. 

“Thank you, my lady,” he says. “I think I’ll go to bed as well, if you don’t mind.” 

“Of course not,” says Brienne. There’s nothing else for either of them to do. 

She leaves them and goes out into the courtyard. The wet air caresses her face. She can’t see Jon Snow anymore and the work is winding down. It all looks more chaotic than it had this morning. She wanders out to the gate - there is a new old guard there now, he folds his arms and glares at her - and looks out at the battlefield covered over with tents. She back walks through the wagons with the tide of women, dashing across to the main hall and the kitchens. 

“Ser Brienne,” calls Jon Snow, from the raised walkway. “Do you have Lady Sansa’s men?” 

Brienne checks about her for the wolf and squints up at him, against the grey light and the odd flurry of dislodged snow. 

“There has been an altercation,” she calls. “I-.” Jon Snow is looking down as if he already knows. 

“How many men do you have? If the Free Folk send more than five, do you have enough?”

“Yes,” says Brienne. “Lady Sansa will need-.”

“I’ll tell Sansa,” Jon Snow says. “I’ll speak to the them.” He taps one of the struts that hold the roof up. “Thank you, Ser Brienne,” he says. “We all thank you for your service.” He strides off, and there is the wolf, pealing out from the shadows and butting up against his steps. 

Brienne goes back to her bed. 

She dozes in fits and starts. There’s no lesson to collect Gendry for and a small selfish part of her wants to put off seeing him anyway. She told Jaime he’d know if anyone asked her to go south. Jaime’s hand is cooling on her back and then gone. The muted light from the window fading in what feels like otherworldly leaps until they’re lit only by the glow of the fire.

She wakes with a start to loud banging. Podrick is already unsteadily upright and blinking. Jaime just turns his face into his hands. The noise condenses itself into a polite knock on the door. 

“Get up!” hisses Brienne, and she heads to the door while they throw on enough to be somewhat presentable. 

A large number of Free Folk are packed around the corner and down the stairs. “If you’re the Maid of Tarth, we’re here to help with the watch,” says the woman at the front. Brienne is painfully aware of Jaime and Pod throwing boots at each other behind the cracked door. 

“Wonderful,” says Brienne, as though she herself is wearing shoes, “Please come in. Tell me your names.”

They make her luxuriously sized room feel small, and they look around it with interest. Now she’s glad that it obviously isn’t just occupied by her. 

“Were any of you going south with Jon Snow?” she asks. There are as many people as she had already selected again. 

“No,” says the woman. “Tormund told us what you wanted. And like Jon Snow said, we’ve all been on watch rotation before.“

Then there is a loud knock at the door. 

“Ser Brienne, I’m coming in,” says a familiar voice. 

Clegane tries to open the door. Several wildlings impede his attempt by not bothering to move.

“You’re supposed to wait to be invited,” calls Brienne.

“For fuck’s sake,” he says, squeezing in. 

“Will we have to work with him?” says someone loudly. “He’s not so bad.” Clegane manages to look even more offended. 

“Yes, you’ll have to work with him,” says Brienne. There are too many of them. Maybe this will put some off. 

“What are you all here for?” Clegane asks the room. They all stare back silently. 

“What are you here for?” someone counters.

Clegane says, “The Lannister that isn’t. He’s coming with me.” Jaime’s head appears above the rest. No one seems quite able to pull off calling him _Jaime_ alone. 

“Alright, give me a moment,” Jaime says. 

Brienne sizes Clegane up. He’s got his sword but he doesn’t look particularly tense. Her boots are by the fire. 

“Sansa asked for him,” Clegane says. He’s watching her in return. 

“I’ll come too,” says Pod, pushing forwards until he emerges from the group. 

“Why not?” says Clegane. 

Jaime follows Pod, buckling on the sword she brought back to him. At any previous moment it would have been a relief to see him wearing it again. He pauses in front of her. 

“I’m going to give them back the sword,” he says, “if she’ll have it.” If he’s looking for approval or objections, she can muster neither. Pod makes eyes at her like he has no idea what’s happening now either, all the way out of the room. 

One of the Wildlings slams the door shut on them. 

“Anyway,” he says, unconcerned, “most of us will stay until winter hits the castle.” Brienne looks at the battered wood at the bottom of the door and the gap where the draft comes through. The man clears his throat. “We’ll stay until it gets bad enough that we’ll all have to head south again.” 

Brienne swallows and swallows again. 

Brienne says, “I don’t think Lady Stark has any plan to leave. We’re looking to set up a permanent guard here, in this castle.”

“What does it matter?” says a man from her left. “We’ve all noticed the watch at night is incompetent. Only one man on each gate! We don’t mind helping out. We’ll sleep better for it.”

There is a general murmur of agreement. 

“It matters if you wander off when there is no one else to take up your post,” she says. “If you can’t commit to staying unless Lady Sansa tells you to go, then thank you, but you can’t be part of the guard.”

“I won’t be part of the guard then,” says the man. “I’ll not go back to being beholden to some girl for no reason but her name.”

The woman behind him hits his shoulder. “She listens,” she says. “We want to stay south of the wall, yes? We don’t want war. There’s a hot spring we can get at when the castle empties. This is where it’s safest. And she’ll listen when we tell her it’s not.” 

“She won’t listen when it matters,” says the man. “You were born beyond the wall. You don’t know what it’s like.” 

“She listened when we told her how to bury the meat,” says a girl so short Brienne can’t see her in the press. “She’s uptight but she’s fierce. She’ll look out for us.” 

“We look out for ourselves,” says a previously silent woman from directly behind Brienne’s shoulder. 

The room descends into loud argument. 

“Enough! Enough,” she shouts, only adding to the volume. She draws herself up. She is at least a head taller than almost everyone in the room. “Be quiet!” She shouts. “Will you all please shut up!” She clears her throat in the silence. “Thank you,” she says primly. 

“We’ll work it out if you leave us to it,” says the small girl, emerging from the middle of the pack. Brienne does not want to leave anyone to it. This is her room.

“The Free Folk have been so generous that there are too many of you. Lady Sansa will be so thankful. But please don’t feel obliged to stay if you can’t commit to the castle.” 

A little less than half the women and more of the men leave again. They won’t outnumber the northern guards now, if you count the Vale. The Vale is northern to her and Winterfell is southern to these people. 

Brienne tries to smile with sincerity. “Thank you, all of you. Lady Sansa will welcome you to the guard very soon. If you could tell me your names again?” 

Once they are gone, Brienne sits down on the bed and puts her elbows on her knees until there is another rattling knock on the door.

“Yes?” Brienne calls, without moving. Gilly opens the door. 

“Sam has the raven men in our rooms,” she says.

“The crows?” says Brienne. At least she knows what that means. She eyes the ragged child in Gilly’s arms.

“No, the raven men,” says Gilly. “Gendry said you might let us work here?” Gilly eyes the desk piled with things and the chair by the fire. Gendry takes the initiative and sits down on the rug, facing Brienne. 

“Thanks,” he says, although Brienne hasn’t said anything. “So. How are you, my lady?” He takes in her bare feet and looks around the room again. He places books and supplies neatly in his lap.“Where’s Podrick? Where’s… um?”

“We heard Jaime punched a castle guard,” says Gilly, settling down next to him and depositing the child in it’s bundle of blankets. So maybe only people who had previously heard of him can’t bring themselves to the informality of his remaining name. 

“There were mitigating circumstances,” says Brienne. Gendry gives her an oddly sympathetic look. 

“I don’t like those men,” says Gilly. “I’m glad you’re sending them away.” 

“I doubt Sansa cares,” says Gendry. “No one likes that lot.” Brienne, having suggested getting rid of them, can’t bring herself to vocalise agreement. 

Instead, she says, “What about Harlon? Harlon… the guard.”

“Who’s that?” Gendry says. “Anyway, Ser- er- he’ll be back. Nothing sticks to him.” 

Brienne can’t really dispute that, except, “They cut off his right hand,” she says, with too much in her voice. Faint heat hits so high on her cheeks that it feels as though it is behind her eyes. She frowns the sensation away. Littler Sam struggles up to his feet, more confident on the rug than he had been on the polished table and sheds blankets in a sad, obstructive ring about himself. He falls over them. 

“Oh no,” says Gilly, mildly, after a pause in which they all wait for him to cry. 

“Get on with your lessons,” Brienne says. Gendry blinks up at her, surprised. “My lord,” she adds. He moistens his lips, staring. 

Gilly takes the papers from him, shuffling through and setting everything about. She keeps everything out of range of Littler Sam’s reaching fists as he props himself up again. 

“I have decided to go south,” announces Gendry. Gilly pauses in taking the stopper out of the ink. Brienne swallows and straightens her shoulders. “I’m supposed to ask you, my lady. I think. I am asking you.” 

He looks hopeful. Brienne does not want to hurt him. 

“My lord, I made a promise to Lady Sansa,” says Brienne. “I mean to see Winterfell safe after the army leaves.” Gendry’s face falls. 

He says, “But I thought-” and cuts himself off. “Sansa told you to help me.” This is similar to what Brienne had told Gendry, because it is what Sansa had asked her to tell him, when Brienne suggested she might write his letters for him. 

“Lady Sansa allowed me to help you, yes,” she corrects. 

“But your people are in the south,” he says. 

Brienne can not answer this. There are more people on Tarth than she has here. That a number of those people were likely happy to see the back of her, does not make them undeserving of her help. Littler Sam sets off towards the fire and Gilly expertly snags the ends of material he trails and, like a horse on a lead line, he keeps going about in a wide arc until he is released in the direction of the desk. He falls again. Gilly twitches towards him and glances anxiously up at Brienne. Littler Sam lies there stunned for a moment, and then he starts climbing back to his feet. 

Gendry sits forwards with new determination. “I’ve been thinking,” he says. “about service. When Podrick said it was devotion, I was thinking about love. But, it’s time I grew up. Maybe it _is_ like being given a wife. A real marriage. Not some fantasy. What protection can I give them out here, pissing about learning to read and write and mooning after-. The queen has _dragons._ I’m a good fighter and you’re better. We can make a real difference to those people. I can make someone else do the reading. Come with me.”

He looks lit up with purpose, but he’s not really commanding, only suggesting. 

Brienne says, “Who did you ask to marry you, my lord?” Gendry flushes and shuts his mouth. Gilly fusses with her papers. 

“What would you say makes a real marriage?” Gilly asks him, without looking away from Littler Sam, even though she must know better than any of them. Then with another glance at Brienne, she adds, “My lord.” Gendry’s flush is deepening. 

“They were saying last time, about a lord and a knight, my master when I was learning, a man and a woman. Obedience for protection,” he says. “For a roof over your head and a little of what they have.” 

“Oh,” says Gilly, “Well… and your person, they didn’t need protection?” 

Gendry snorts.

“That’s not what I offered,” he says. He rubs his arms. “I don’t have anything to offer you either,” he tells Brienne. “I can’t order you to come. That would be a joke.” 

Brienne pushes her toes into the floor. Authority had come easily to Renly. 

“You could,” she says, “You could tell the queen if I refused.” Gendry blinks at her. Brienne repeats herself anyway, “I have a duty to Lady Sansa and the people staying at Winterfell.”

Gendry says slowly, “But your father answers to Storm’s End.” Brienne does not tell him that she thinks her father might be dead. Then, all in a rush, he says, “I want to see it. I want to see where I come from. Find the people who knew my father before he went to King’s Landing.” He looks very young. She waits for him to decide. 

Gilly decisively opens a book, possibly to distract from Littler Sam, diverted from the desk, tugging a long thread out of the edge of the rug. 

Noticing Brienne watching, she asks, “Would you like to hold him?” She begins to push the ink towards Gendry. Gendry takes the ink, looking more than a little lost. 

“No thank you,” says Brienne and she takes her chair on a careful route where it can’t somehow collide with Littler Sam and sits on it, where it should be, back at the desk.

***

Jaime comes back with a thick northern cloak under his arm. Gendry watches him, part frustration, part amusement. Brienne stands next to Jaime as he lays it down on the bed and stares at it bemusedly.

“At least I won’t freeze to death watching you and Pod practice,” he says. His sword belt is bare. 

“I told you she’d find you something warmer if we asked,” Brienne tells him, still feeling the waves in her stomach. Jaime looks a little flustered, glancing at Gendry and Gilly. 

“I didn’t ask for it,” he says, then he deflates again. “It felt a little like I traded for it?” He looks confused again. “I gave Sansa the blasted thing and she made it all very elegant and not at all like I was returning the tainted half of her father’s sword years after my father butchered it. Then she invited me up into the solar and had a woman bring me this cloak. I think the damned thing probably belonged to some dead Stark, so I’ll be unable to leave a fireside thinking of anything else until it’s spring, even if we do ever leave this awful castle.”

Brienne stares down at the cloak.

“The castle isn’t awful,” she says. 

He passes a hand over his face. On the floor, Gilly and Gendry start scrambling around collecting their things. 

“No, I suppose it’s not,” Jaime says.

“What are you going to do for a sword?” Pod asks. Jaime continues to stare down at the cloak. 

“What is Sansa supposed to do with that sword?” Brienne says. She’s formed romantic notions while she sat by the desk and stared at Oathkeeper, about two swords from one, joined in defence of Winterfell. She would prefer to never speak them aloud. She’s had time, now it’s too late, to formulate her objections.

“Perhaps Lord Gendry will be able to make it into a weapon not named _Widow’s Wail_ of all things,” he says, looking again at Gendry who is now standing, clutching Gilly’s books like he is waiting to be dismissed. “Ned Stark’s steel shouldn’t have been used to terrorise little girls.” 

Brienne says through gritted teeth, “You fought for the living. Fought for his daughters. You could have renamed it. Your left hand is weaker; its lightness and its strength will have been compensating.” 

“I understand that perfectly well,” says Jaime. “I’ve been training with tourney swords for years now. I’ll adjust as best I can.” 

“Without that steel’s power against those things you would be dead,” Brienne tells him. “I’d be dead. _Podrick_ would be dead.” He looks up at her, jaw set. “You could have sworn it to her.”

“I do have some shame,” he says. 

“Thank you for letting us use your room,” says Gilly, loudly from behind her. Brienne turns her back on him.

She makes her face pleasant. “It was no trouble,” she says, “We’ll see you at dinner?” Gendry doesn’t seem to have anything further to say, but Littler Sam stares back at her around Gilly’s shoulder as they leave. 

“The things from that night are gone,” Jaime picks up, as soon as the door closes. “We’ll never see their like again.” This seems bizarrely optimistic to Brienne and he must see her doubt. He redirects. “I’ll find a sword, and unless we run into someone more than half as brilliant as you, I can do my part, and if we do,” he says, visibly attempting to compose his face into something lighter, “won’t you protect me, Ser Brienne.” 

She will. She grits her teeth. She doesn’t know why she’s arguing. It’s already done.

“Gendry wants me to march south,” she says. Jaime drops his teasing expression. 

Pod says, at an unexpectedly high volume, “He wants what?”

Brienne waits for Jaime’s face to wipe itself blank, but he just keeps staring up at her. Brienne turns to Pod. 

“I can make you a knight,” she says. This seems to compound his shock. He looks at Jaime and back. “I should have done it before Lord Tyrion left.”

Pod frowns. “Why? I didn’t want to go with Lord Tyrion. I want to go with you.” Then his eyes flick back to Jaime, who is silent behind her. “Unless you ask me not to,” he adds.

She looks down at him, feeling pride blossoming expansive and lush, pressing out against her ribs. She would trust them to look after each other. 

“I might ask you not to come,” she says, “I won’t command it, but I might ask.” She hears Jaime sit down on the bed. 

Podrick smiles. “Thank you,” he says. He casts another glance past her to Jaime. “Thank you, my lady. If you’ll dismiss me now, I’ll see you at the evening meal.”

Brienne widens her eyes at him. “But we should…” she says. Oathkeeper is over the desk. She feels that the moment is wrong somehow. Perhaps because she isn’t wearing boots. But then maybe the moment won’t ever be right.

“No,” he says. “I’m going to the Sept. Not all night. Just to look in for old time’s sake. And I hear there is a glasshouse here that grows those peas. There’s someone who says-. Well, I’d like to see it, just in case.” He doesn’t actually wait for dismissal.

“Why would he want to see that?” asks Jaime from the bed. Brienne can see the attraction; warmth and greenery in this endless grey gloom. 

“Perhaps it’s beautiful?” Jaime is still frowning, doubting. 

“Do you think we should try to see it?” he asks, “If the hot springs feed it, it’s probably humid like it is beneath the castle, but it might be better smelling.”

Brienne tries to muster offence on Winterfell’s behalf. It isn’t foul smelling. It is only that there is little air flow by the springs now the castle has been built over them. Jaime sighs. 

“If you’re angry with me about the sword, I’d appreciate you telling me why.” She wants to protect him, but part of that is making sure that he can protect himself. He’s dispensed with all his titles, his money, his sword, and broken whatever loyalty he had to Cersei all in a rush. She’d thought they were being sensible. “Once the army moves out, this won’t be the same castle. I’m not a knight. I have no military position or task to perform that would require a sword.” 

“We might all leave,” she says, then she drifts closer. “And you need to be prepared to be here alone.” He looks up at her. 

“I still have my knives. I’ll be ready.” He tugs off and throws down his gloves. “Do you honestly think it was the wrong thing to do?” he asks, shoulders tilting. 

She’d just felt better with the steel on his hip. They were closer to being balanced. Fighting next to him on the battlements, there had been a symmetry she’s never felt before. She puts a hand to the phantom weight at her hip. Jaime’s eyes follow.

“No,” she says. Her throat clicks. “If you felt it was the right thing to do and Sansa was willing to take it, there was honour it, I’m sure.” 

He takes her hand and pulls her down beside him, so she doesn’t have to tilt her chin down to meet his eyes.

“I’d tell Pod to go with you,” he says. “Sansa and I are great friends now.” 

“He’ll do what _I_ tell him,” says Brienne. 

“That he will,” says Jaime. Then, “Let’s not talk about that.” Brienne shifts back to lie down on the bed, over the northern fur. 

“What should we talk about? Tourneys past and exciting advances in mace wielding technique?” 

“Why not?” he says. He lies down next to her. “Tell me how you defeated Tyrell?” Brienne doesn’t know. That was so long ago. 

“With a mace,” she says. 

Jaime says, “Be serious,” amused like he thinks she’s playing with the words. He slumps onto her shoulder. 

“I did,” she says. 

“Oh,” he says. “The mace again. You were careful not to break anything of his, I’ll bet.” He reaches across to put his hand over her ribs. “Why don’t you still use it?” 

She tries to think it through in retrospect. She had wanted to scare people, she thinks. She hadn’t wanted people to approach her back when she was training in Tarth. She had wanted to stop all their laughter. “I wanted to show that I wasn’t a girl playing at fighting,” she says. “Then I wanted to show something else. A sword is better to carry.” A sword had the glamour of Jaime riding at a dragon with a lance. You could paint a tall, broad figure with a sword onto a wall in miniature. Women and children didn’t flee from a helmeted figure with a sheathed sword, or at least, not unless you gave them a reason. Brienne hadn’t thought it through in this way at the time. 

He’s idly stocking the plate between her ribs, following further down, though there is nothing to touch with her lying on her back. The stroking is getting to her. 

“Jaime,” she says quietly, and he looks up at her, curious, propping himself up on an elbow. 

“Oh,” he says and he collapses away onto his back, grinning a little. “Sorry.” 

She follows him over and puts a cheek to his chest, slowly relaxing her weight into his warm side. He brings his hand up to comb fingers through her hair, following the lay of it, back against her skull. She traces the stitches in his clothing. She can feel the slow rising and falling of ribs she can’t see. She can hear his heart beat, steady and loudly distant, percussion beat through the surface of the water when you’re down swimming along the sandy bed. 

She twists to look up at him. He has his eyes closed. He flutters them open when she pushes up onto an elbow and his hand falls away. There is something about it, the simple fact of him sprawling under her. If women talk about this as they march and work, she wishes suddenly, that she had heard those stories too. Perhaps she shouldn’t have turned away from all those camp followers who teased and clucked at her. She smooths his hair back from his forehead and she can see the furrow between his brows that deepens as he tips his head to look at her better. She settles herself lower on her elbow and gathering her courage, she slips a hand around to cup the back of his head. She bunches a gentle fist into the back of his hair. His eyes widen. 

“Tell me to stop,” says Brienne.

He swallows as she tightens her hold. It looks like he’s struggling to keep his mouth closed. 

“Stop,” he grates out. 

Brienne snatches her grip away. 

“What?” he says. The dark centres of his eyes are wide and black. “Oh. No, Brienne. I thought it was part of it. A dance,”- she feels her face spasm - “Carry on. I’ll only say it if I mean it. If you carry on I’ll stop talking.”

He catches his grin between his teeth and shuts his eyes, until her heart has slowed again and she has her hand back in his hair. Then she watches as he tenses and all the tendons in his neck stand out as she tips his neck back. She watches, desperately, for discomfort. She thinks maybe, if she pulled harder, he would make a noise. His chest shakes, and there’s a spreading bruise of pink blood high on his cheeks. It looks like he’s struggling to keep his mouth even partially closed. She swallows and slackens her fist, smoothing the angry tufts of hair she can feel back into order. He crack his eyes open, looking at her curiously.

“What was that?” he says. Brienne despairs. She certainly doesn’t know. He pushes up to catch her lip between his teeth. That thrills though her. He softens it into a long scratchy kiss. She knocks him back down into the fur.

“Do the same to me,” she says, and she lies down. 

“What?” he says, again. “No.”

She frowns up at the ceiling. 

“It’s only fair,” she says, and listens to his stillness. 

“It’s not,” he says. 

Eventually he snorts out a dubious breath, but his hand comes around to cup the back of her head, fingers searching through the shortness of her hair. His face comes into view above hers. She shuts her eyes, clenches her teeth together, ready, aware of the ridiculous nature of her apprehension. It won’t hurt her, even if he tries, which seems impossible. Very slightly he tightens his grip. She doesn’t understand it: there’s no pain, it doesn’t feel much like anything. She moves against him, trying to find the thrill. He gathers her up, arm around her shoulders and tightens his hold, trying to pull her neck back as though for a sword. Now it is uncomfortable. She feels large and lumpen like this. His eyes are serious and wide when she gives up and opens hers.

“This is stupid,” she says. She doesn’t understand why he’d let her do that to him. Why she’d done it. He unclenches his fist from her hair. He looks down at her, strangely fond. 

“It wasn’t my idea,” he says and he dips in to kiss her, gentle again. She puts her arms around his waist, she pushes up into him, rolls with him, onto him, the heavy weight of his hand is crushed between their chests, so she moves it aside, up and out of the way. His eyes go soft. It makes her chest ache.

She presses the side of her face to his. She turns her consciously steady breathing into his neck. She bites him, very deliberately at he hinge of his jaw. 

He starts to laugh. She bites him more sharply and he stops. He kisses her back onto her side. Time sticks again, it’s quality like sleeping outside in the summer, with the air from his nose warm on her cheek. 

“Food,” she says, feeling the hollowness in her belly and stretching the blood back into her legs. “Pod will be expecting us.”

“You go,” he says, “They’ll be singing to the march south.” Brienne does not want to come back to him listlessly lying in bed again. She doesn’t want to feel like she’s keeping him up here and coming back to argue with him and pull his hair. 

“No one is singing,” she repeats. Then, sensibly, “You’re already dressed.” 

Jaime groans but he obeys.

***

There is singing. Jaime sits next to her, icily composed in his new cloak. 

Until he mutters, “Well, I didn’t think it was possible for the food to be any worse but here they have managed it.”

“We can leave,” says Brienne. 

Jaime looks up at the high table and says, “No we can’t.” 

Podrick talks about the glass house, projecting deliberate cheerfulness at them across the plates: “So green and warm like summer, my lady. How it survived the battle when the glass looks so delicate…”

Brienne will ask him to show it to them. She stays, listening to the chatter rising and falling in the great hall. This reminds her of Tarth; the candles, the wine and lifted voices, sitting here in the corner feeling outside of the merriment. But there is still a chance that the Queen will stand again and announce that she will bestow honours earned in the battle. Surely she will legitimise Jon Snow, or honour him in some other way. Sansa has put the thought of Pod in her head, even if it hadn’t immediately taken. 

There are so many toasts to the coming war, to victory over their enemies, to the great deeds to come and the songs that will be written of them. Bran is dreamily occupied with staring at the wolf and Arya is watching out of the corner of her eye, feigning indifference. There is more singing. It is better Tyrion is gone, although Gendry looks a little wide eyed to have been given his seat at the high table. It wouldn’t be decent for him to preside over this.

As the feasting breaks down into more determined drinking, the men start to drag tables out of the way. Brienne feels as cheerful about this development as the queen’s unsullied look. She grabs Jaime’s wrist as they scramble off the benches and out of the way. Gilly and Pod look guiltily thrilled, while Sam becomes increasingly red.

“Now we can leave,” Jaime says, as the musicians start matching pitch. 

Brienne watches the queen’s advisor, Missandei, float down from behind the high table towards Grey Worm, as the young men from the Vale start clapping and scuffing their feet over the floor to get the musicians to pick up their rhythm. Grey Worm leaves the other men behind to meet her. 

Sam is saying, “Oh, I don’t know,” to Gilly who clearly wants to pull him into the thick of things. Brienne thinks he will give in easily. 

“I’ll stay, my lady,” says Pod, with his eyes fixed somewhere in the moving mass on the opposite side of the room. “See you tomorrow,” he says.

“Where will you sleep?” Brienne calls after him, too late. 

“There’s nothing to stop you staying for a dance,” says Jaime, which is rank stupidity. Gendry stands up from the high table and sets his shoulders. 

“You shouldn’t walk back alone,” she says, which is practical. This is when she would duck back to her rooms at home too. They have to walk single file through the press of people moving against them towards the music.

***

Jaime throws his cloak over the chair and doesn’t come back for hers. He tugs his boots off and tosses them under the desk. He leaves his jacket on the floor. He sits down on the far side of the bed with his back to her. 

Brienne starts to unbuckle her sword belt. Then she pauses. He sits forwards to put his elbows on his knees. She could go back to the feast. She could stand in a corner until someone gets drunk enough that they dare ask her to dance, and then she could refuse them and give them a marvellous anecdote for the morning. It would be just like home. 

“Go and dance or come to bed,” he says. “You can do whatever you like.” 

She pops the buckle on her belt and hefts the great cloak over her head. She walks around him and leaves them both over the desk. She doesn’t lock the door when she leaves him; Lady Catelyn’s touch is everywhere and there is an indoor lavatory in this keep, the baths beneath, the staircase that Pod says he caught him running up to stretch his legs. She turns back to him.

“It wasn’t right to make you come,” she says. 

Jaime looks up at her. Then the tension shifts within him and he slumps. 

“You didn’t _make_ me,” he says, annoyed rather than angry. Brienne studies him. He doesn’t think she made him. Surely that is enough. 

“When I said you could stay here,” Brienne says, “I didn’t mean to cast myself as a jailor. I shouldn’t have offered Gendry your room.” He’d given up the sword and the money and there wasn’t anything she could do about his name. 

“I thought I wasn’t a prisoner,” he says. “After all, Brienne, they let me feast and drink with.” 

“They do,” she says. “Sansa gave you a family cloak.” Jaime seems to think this is funny. He puts his face down into his hand. 

“Am I complaining?” 

Brienne says, “Yes,” although he hasn’t been complaining _very much_. She might feel better if he complained more. 

“Then you know all is well,” he says, like the matter is settled, but it isn’t, because she doesn’t feel like she can sit on the bed with him, and at this point it might be ruder to set up and sleep on the rug. 

She tries, “It will be better once the men are gone. One way or another.”

Jaime says, “I hope I can keep this room. It doesn’t smell nearly so much up here,” and he looks up at her expectantly. Brienne seizes on this. 

“I’ll make sure,” she says. Just in case they make her go. It will be good to think of Jaime and Pod here, where she left them. Jaime tosses his head. 

“Gods, don’t do that. It doesn’t actually smell.” Brienne stares at him for a little while, caught between a frustration that catches in her throat, and frustration that makes her want to crash about alone with a sword until she has exhausted herself. She fills her lungs carefully and stays where she is. “Brienne,” he says, “your skills as a jailor have atrophied severely in the time since we first met.” 

She doesn’t feel like a fool now. She feels like the worst things she has ever been called. Beastly. If he feels that she is keeping him here, locked up in a keep, then she cannot even be angry with him for thinking it, because he is being kept here. Even if it is politically impossible for him to be anywhere else. 

He’s looks worried again now. 

“I wouldn’t want to go back to my room even if I could,” he says, “Don’t look so worried. It seems likely that Sansa will fight to keep you.” 

Brienne says, “I’m not worried about _myself_

“Well, you can’t be worried about me,” he says. “I’m _perfectly fine_ ” He can’t possibly be fine. He’s shedding brothers and swords and Brienne is-.

“I’m not worried about marching into another war,” Brienne says - Jaime tries to interrupt, but she rides over him - “I’m worried about leaving you here. I’m worried about Tarth. I’m worried about Gendry going and the castle starving and the changing guard. I’m worried that I’m keeping you here like some…” 

He screws his face up and sits back up, the laxness gone in a moment. Brienne stands straighter and shuts her mouth on the upturned tumble of words.

“That’s a lot of worries,” Jaime says. He doesn’t tell her that she isn’t keeping him here. She can’t make him go to dinner - even when she can - but she can keep him here.

“They all said that this was beastly,” Brienne says, gesturing between them. Marriages are cruel. “That I was-.” 

“You’re not beastly,” he says, as if the notion is ridiculous, “What kind of idiot said that to you?”

“You said it,” she says. Men always say it.

Jaime says, _“When?”_ Then he scrubs his hair flat and stands up. “Surely I didn’t. You’re the furthest thing.” He doesn’t seem to know what to do once standing. “I forgot your cloak again,” he says.

“I do not care,” says Brienne. That does not feature in the bag of worries. “That was all your idea anyway.” 

He pauses, “I do think I called you a man.” He comes closer, snags the chair out from the desk and carries it back to place it in front of the fire.

It’s likely. Man and monster feel like the same things in this conversation. 

Brienne says, “How is that better?” Jaime cuts a smile back at her.

“Poor Podrick,” Jaime says. “Ah, I would have made a terrible wife to a household knight, but maybe I can wave you off,” he says. “Sob into my sleeve.” He turns to wince at her. “Sorry,” he says, “That was in bad taste. I know I should be sensible.” 

When she’d left Tarth, her father had not cried. He’d accepted her decision calmly and had not attempted to have her chained. He had not come out to watch her ride away, as Jaime had, even back at King’s Landing. 

“I told Gendry that I had a duty to see Winterfell safe after the queen had left.” Jaime turns back fast.

 _”Brienne,”_ he says

“I didn’t do it for you!” she says, meaning and hoping that she hasn’t done it for herself, “Sansa-.”

“I _know_ ” he interrupts. “What did he _say_?”

“Nothing yet,” she says. “He’s not going to throw his weight around lightly.” 

“Who put the idea in his head? The queen? ” Jaime asks. “He sat near her tonight. Why would the queen want to take you from Sansa? Gods, we need Tyrion back for this. ”

Brienne says, “I think it was us. We convinced him that going was his duty.” 

Jaime sits down on the chair he’s returned to the fireside.

“Shit,” he says. 

Brienne takes her boots off and picks up his jacket, throws it over the desk. She sits down on the edge of the bed and puts her right ankle on her left knee. She grabs her toes and starts pulling out the tightness from the injury that is lingering. It’s been ten days. The surface abrasion is practically healed. 

“I really called you a beast?” Jaime says, “Well, fuck me, then. Really. I used to be angry about how wonderful you are, but I’ve made my peace with it.” He shuffles the chair to face her, rucking up the rug under the legs. “You’re the best person alive,” he says, “And if he’s picked up ideas of noble responsibility he’s learned them from you.” 

Brienne says, “I’ve liked coming back to you here.” To have the fire high and him beside it. She hasn’t had enough time to begin to anticipate it, but she thinks she could begin to look forward to it. Even if she is only coming back to argue and pull his hair. Jaime ducks to try and meet her eye. 

“You think I make a good wife to a household knight?” She avoids him, because she doesn’t want it to be a joke. He sits back and watches her. He stretches out and crosses his legs. “Cersei would have been happier if they had let her be a man,” he says. She can’t help but jump. Her instinctive response is to snap at him and shut him up. It seems so unlikely. Brienne has seen Cersei, and Cersei has delicate features, court sharp manners and elegant dresses that sit naturally on her body. “It was easier when I thought we could be both, and neither, one in two,” he says. “I think she always knew that was impossible.” She takes over her reply, and he looks more uncomfortable every second she waits. "We used to put lemon juice through our hair," he says, "and plot about how perfect we would be."

She can see the appeal in separating the mess of it into two neat and discrete parts. When she first left Tarth, she would have seen the appeal in that idea of perfection.

“I am glad to be a knight,” she says. The knighthood makes it all even stranger, but much easier to explain. He looks like he might be parsing something in that, and she’s not sure she wants him to manage it. She jerks her chin at him, calling him back.

She dares to ask, going back to working her leg, hoping not to spook him back into flippancy, “You said you dreamed of me. What did you dream?”

“That we fought side by side.” She looks up to devour the sincerity on his face. She presses her fingers underneath the long ropes in her ankle. That’s not a dream she ever conjured while asleep. For her that was a waking wish. “You were naked,” he says, casually and she pulls back, too shocked to be affronted. 

“Oh, do piss off,” she says, but she can feel the smile tugging at her lips. 

“It’s true,” he says, “You were magnificent. You would splash out of the water and try to save me.” That’s familiar. Violence and care all braided together. 

“It was a happy dream?” she asks, searching his expression. What did Jaime Lannister need saving from once returned to King’s Landing? She had no ability to save him from his own poor decisions. The minute he’d decided to leave, he had.

He shrugs, insouciant and then when she continues to watch him, he twists his mouth.

“I dreamed you and Lady Catelyn came to chain me again, for my neglected oaths. I dreamed you were a coward, like me, gone back to your father; happy and safe. I dreamed we found you dead in the Riverlands, full of water. I dreamed-. Did you dream of me? Was I naked?”

“You’re not a coward,” she says, automatic, still caught in the bombardment. “And I didn’t.”

“You needn’t drape yourself in white with me,” he says.

She’s supposed to tell him to shut up. That’s how the rhythm goes. Instead, Brienne swallows hard and says to the fire behind him, matching his confession, “You’re always dying.” The levity is gone in an instant from his face. “I take off Renly’s armour - your armour - in his tent.” She can feel the burn behind her eyes and the pounding canter of her heart, “Stannis kills you, gone into smoke and I hold you while you’re drowned in fever back in Harrenhal.” Her waking dreams are better but harder to admit. 

She realises she has fallen into a trap. They are both naked at the end of that dream, but Jaime is dead and she is sick with horror. He gets up and comes to sit next to her. 

“Do you sleep peacefully here?” he asks. “I’ve slept well, since I came to Winterfell. Better since you invited me to stay.” 

Brienne can’t remember the last time she slept through dawn, until these last few mornings. This far from that long night and with so many luxuriously good hours of sleep behind her she does not know if she can blame battle exhaustion. It has been nine whole nights now. Ten days since she sent the letter. Seven nights since she has slept alone.

“You’re awake at night sometimes.”

“So are you,” he says, defensive. “Neither of us has enough to occupy us. The horrors take a little time to slip from the surface of the mind when there are no new ones to exhaust it; it’s the way of things.” Brienne doesn’t know that she has much experience with that idea. She can’t remember the last time there was no new oncoming horror, even now, there is Tarth, and now perhaps another last war after all. “But you sleep better here?”

“Yes,” she says. He gathers himself. 

“I can find out who has the key to that greenhouse. I can learn to lay bricks and remember how to mend clothes. I can be so trustworthy they think nothing of me riding out beyond the walls alone.” He smiles. Brienne frowns. 

“We’re going to Tarth,” she says. “They would let you ride out now, I think.” 

“Yes,” he says, but Brienne knows him now, and he trusts her, but he thinks she’s wrong about that. “In the meantime,” he says, “I will sleep well here, even if I shouldn’t.” She reaches out and takes his hand. 

“What was the second thing?” she asks, bumping his shoulder with hers. “The second thing you wanted me to ask Sansa. Did you ask for yourself?”

Jaime makes an incredulous noise of amusement and squeezes her fingers. 

“There are limits to my shamelessness. It doesn’t matter now. Let’s not talk about that.” 

“You were embarrassed to ask?” she says. She does not believe it. 

“No,” he says shortly, and she immediately feels better. She pats his hand and lets him go.

Jaime pulls of his gloves.

“How’s the wrist?” she asks, remembering the thud of contact with that poor idiot’s face. 

Jaime pulls his shirt sleeve back, flicks open the buckles and drops the hand into his lap. Underneath the little leather cap, his improbably well healed skin is only a little red. He gives the skin a quick rub and screws up his nose at whatever the sensation is.

He says, “Perhaps someone would take the hand in payment for work on a sword worth having. That’s a lot of gold if you know how to make it into something anyone else would want.” 

“You don’t need to give it away,” Brienne tells him. It is gaudy and ridiculous, but it’s beautiful. It’s useful. She’s grown used to looking at it. It really prickles at her, this sudden throwing off of everything. Jaime watches her with his eyes slitted. She casts about in case she needs better words. “There needs to some of you left,” she tells him, “I want there to be some of you left.” His face falls open for her, and then he stretches his arm over her shoulders and tips the two of them together. Brienne soaks up the heat and shuts her eyes

“Alright, Brienne,” he says quietly.

***

In the morning, Brienne finds the woman with the curly hair and the husband sitting on their staircase. It’s still dark and the castle is very still until Brienne nearly charges into her. The woman jumps up as Brienne clatters to an abrupt halt. 

“Lady Brienne?” says the woman, like it’s a question, several steps below and at least a foot shorter anyway. She’s speaks quietly. “Could you keep it down above us? I’ve been meaning to ask you.” Brienne finds that she is not embarrassed. This is finally beyond what she can bring herself to care about. She has left Jaime sleeping well and she has other concerns this morning. She does not know who this person is. “Your crashing swords. The stamping feet.” - oh - “On and on. So many visitors. I’m very sorry, my lady, I’m sure the old man didn’t care - he was deaf as anything - but the sound of fighting goes straight through me now. I hope I’m not unreasonable.”

It’s not unreasonable. The castle is returning to order, gradually, and you aren’t supposed to train with swords in private quarters. Before Jaime, they were keeping to the courtyards. 

“Yes, we’ll be quieter in future. I apologise Lady…”

“Lady Rhoda, please. Let us be friends,” she says, with a glance back at the door to her own room. “I’ve been running up and down the stairs when I can’t sit still a moment longer. If I had a sword I would-. Well, I sympathise.” Brienne takes another step, hoping to slip past, still a little lost. Lady Rhoda puts her arm across the stairwell and pretends to lean on the wall. “You seem to lead such an exciting life, Lady Brienne. Will you be staying here, when the men travel south? I see you with Lady Sansa so often, and I would like to remain here too, if only my husband will get it out of his head that someone needs to check on the old man’s land. Our land. What will I do if it has been overrun by the goats? Well, eat the goats I suppose, but I-”

“I am a knight,” says Brienne, suddenly, “and I will not be staying here for much longer. I’m sorry, Lady Rhoda.” 

“Oh,” says the woman, she puts a hand to her chest, calloused fingers brushing her collar. “Of course. Forgive me, ser.”

“It’s quite alright,” says Brienne. “I suppose you will be pleased to hear the last of the stamping feet.”

“Not at all,” says Lady Rhoda. “Imagine who they will give us instead.” Brienne finds herself smiling down at the woman, even as the sweet smile she is answering dims.

“Who they will give _me,_ ” the woman corrects. 

“Do you have any particular skills to recommend you?” Brienne says, giving up on getting past. “Lady Sansa will certainly want you to stay, but perhaps if there was a practical use that you had here, so that your husband could not object?”

The woman looks a little wild eyed at this. 

“The usual things,” she says. “I can wrap small wounds now. I can read, my mother thought for a better match, but look how that has worked out: we have titles and land, for all the good it will do us. I can capture a fine figure in an embroidery, but I haven’t any samples here, and oh, of course, they won’t be needing any embroidery and I don’t think I-” 

“It’s fine,” says Brienne. “Your safety will be the issue. The Stark’s can overrule him. He’ll be leaving with Jon Snow, yes? Once your husband is gone, how will he make you go?” 

The woman drops her arm. 

“I suppose,” she says. “But I can’t lie to him. Not when he might never come back to scold me for it. I just thought if Lady Sansa could speak to him for me-.”

“Lady Sansa has too much work. He rides out today,” says Brienne, “There is no time.” She tries to take another step, but the woman does not move. She has begun to look very red above her cheeks.

“I would have asked earlier if he had _told_ me earlier,” she says. “He heard the Bear Islanders were going and it _occurred_ to him all of a sudden. I see you with her. Could you not speak to her? Please.”

Brienne softens. 

“I’ll do my best,” she says, “But I can’t promise.” 

_”Thank you”_ says the woman, with a fervency that is upsetting. “If I can do anything for you…”

Brienne pauses. She’s made it to the bottom of the steps finally, the woman folding elegantly backwards once she had what she wanted. Jaime had suggested she speak to a woman. About not having children. But they have been quiet and it’s only the swords disturbing their neighbours so Brienne needn’t confirm any rumours. The castle is returning to order. Brienne does not know her. As best she understands it, he knows what he is doing. 

“Are there any spare clothes about for a child of at least two summers, maybe more,” Brienne says. “Something for his feet and his hands?” She makes the shape of Littler Sam between her hands, spread surprisingly tall for someone so small. The woman nods the whole time. Then she smiles, relieved perhaps, to have a task.

“I saw your visitor,” she says, conspiratorially, “He runs up and down the stairs too. My husband does not like him, but _I_ do.” 

“Good morning,” says Brienne, and she flees.

***

Clegane isn’t outside Sansa’s door, but the large group of Free Folk are. 

“She’s not here yet,” one of them tells her, sounding more than a little annoyed about it. 

“Lady Sansa is very busy,” says Brienne. A man makes a rude noise somewhere behind her and mutters something about kissing hems. “But I’m sure she will apologise if she has kept you waiting.” They stand about. The Free Folk either don’t like idle chatter, or they are uncomfortable in her presence. Unable to leave, Brienne starts telling them everything she knows about the pattern of the current guards. 

Sansa sweeps in when they are in fierce discussion over the allocation of archers on the walls. She has her wolf draped on one shoulder, Clegane at the other and a retinue of Northern women who disperse behind her and take off in all directions. Sansa very carefully does not at smile the Free Folk, but she gives them a pretty speech. She avoids thanking them for service. She does apologise for keeping them waiting. 

She says, “Brienne of Tarth and Sandor Clegane will be assisting you.” She does dismiss them, and they do seem to collectively leave when prompted. Brienne isn’t sure how much their proclaimed freedom is going to translate into not following orders, and feels very responsible for the idea of recruiting them, and as she is also very aware that she essentially refused Gendry’s implicit order only yesterday. She shuts the door, firmly leaving Clegane outside. 

“Do you need anything this morning?” says Brienne.

“No. You’ve done well,” says Sansa, pulling scrolls out of her sleeve and placing them in the sideboard draws. Brienne eyes them. “There’s no news from Tarth, I’m sorry, Brienne.” 

“Has there been anything else from the Stormlands? Any news from King’s Landing,” she adds. Sansa turns back to her.

“I have spoken to the new Lord Baratheon. He understands that you will be staying here.” Brienne feels cool relief flood up through her hands to her chest. 

“He asked me to go with him,” she says, in the interest of full transparency, “only last night.” 

“And now he understands why that is impossible. He is also committed to seeing Winterfell safe after the queen leaves. You’re more useful to us here.” Sansa heads back to the door. It is as Brienne had thought. She has Sansa, or Sansa has her. No one can make her do anything. She doesn’t feel particularly comfortable with having this quite so explicitly performed, but she wouldn’t give it up for anything.

“There is a woman in the keep, Lady Rhoda. _Lady Flint_ ,” Brienne remembers. Sansa turns back to her. “Her husband wants to send her back to wherever it is they came from. She asks for your intervention.” Sansa’s mouth thins. 

“Idiot men,” she says. “They want their children to die for empty hills. I will have Jon speak to the lot of them.” She looks genuinely annoyed as she ushers Brienne out and locks the door. 

Brienne drifts after them to the courtyard, where Sansa hitches up her skirts and marches out onto the ice. The courtyard is awake and there are many more horses than there were in the stables. The sound of an army getting it’s feet under itself seems to rise up over the walls and sweep through her, jarring her bones. There are more men than Renly ever marched with. Even now.

***

Jaime is sitting up in bed, flipping a knife in fingers that lack their usual grace. She leaves their breakfast balanced on the end of the bed. She can’t see anything of the preparations from their window, but she can hear the great roar of moving men, hardly muted. The stamping of thousands upon thousands of feet is pounding through the walls and still lodges itself in Brienne’s chest. 

“Are you going or not?” he says.

She shakes her head. “Sansa wants me here.”

Jaime sets the knife down beside the bed and sinks back into the covers.

“I’m going to lie here and let them ride off to take the last of it from her,” Jaime says slowly. 

“Yes,” says Brienne.

“What are you going to do?” asks Jaime, pushing forward to put his arms across his folded knees. Really the best thing to do would be to keep out of everyones way. 

“Whatever is asked of me,” Brienne says and Jaime rolls over and pulls their pile of furs over his head. Brienne has to grab for the food. The mound on the bed that is Jaime sighs deeply. The dragons have been louder today, crying longer and more frequently.

“What else?” he says, still muffled by bedding, “I’ll do the same.” Then he heaves himself out of bed to duck his face into their bowl of water.

There really is nothing to do. Not even for Pod, who drifts back to see them as the light begins to harden. Respectful of Lady Flint, they pick up their blunt swords and slip into the deserted godswood to play at fighting. 

Jaime eyes the tree, but he only says, “It’s good to see some colour.” 

“The tree doesn’t mind if we fight here,” says Brienne, trying to repeat the joke, “Arya checked with Bran.” 

Pod laughs, even if Jaime doesn’t.

Standing up on the walls with Sansa, Arya, and the northerners remaining with their carefully set faces, it feels strange to have been rehearsing death so lightly when all the wide stretch of people before her are truly going off to war. They watch until Brienne’s legs lock up in the cold as the slight party of Dothraki snake out of sight over the hills, leading teams of horses slowly through the snow. The Unsullied march en masse behind. 

The northmen and Free Folk make a poor show in comparison, milling about while Jon, Royce and a few other heavily armoured men ride among them, issuing last minute encouragement. She can’t pick out Gendry. She didn’t get to say goodbye. When Jon reaches the front, urging his horse to begin to follow, a great shout goes up amongst all the assembled thousands and around Brienne. The licence to make noise seems to break something loose in the northerners and scattered weeping begins to have a voice all along the wall. She recognises, with a guilty lurch, the woman who had brought Harlon the gate guard his stew. Brienne watches, the cold stinging her eyes as the woman covers her mouth with her sleeve. Lady Flint, who had spent this morning outmanoeuvring her husband, is now wet eyed and looks furious about it. Sansa turns and begins to walk the wall, stopping to murmur quietly to everyone who turns to her.

Jaime, standing rigidly besides Brienne, is ignoring the people around him, staring out after the army with his jaw set. He begins, for the first time that Brienne has noticed, to attract attention which feels truly hostile. He’d refused to go back to their room when Pod suggested it and now, it as though everyone has suddenly realised, here stands Jaime Lannister. His eyes are slitted even though the wind comes from behind, trying to drive them off the wall and south with the rest. 

Then, he’s clutching at her, dragging her down, the air suddenly absent and the light almost gone. The dragon sails on. Brienne can hear the whooping encouragements of the men below. There was no warning beat of wings. They’re crouching. The second flies by above them, higher up, until it rotates its wings and it feels as though they will all be swept off the wall. Jaime’s hand is tight around her wrist, her grip is fisted in the ruff of his furs. They stand hastily. Brienne looks frantically for Sansa, who she sees, shoulders high, trying to smooth her hair out of her face, then she looks to Harlon’s woman who is looking up open mouthed, no longer crying at all as the dragons cut lazily over the lines of men. Jaime has turned to kneel besides the elderly woman who had fallen next to him and who is swearing liberally and inventively. The cheering of the soldiers is still being carried back to them on the wind. Arya catches Brienne’s attention and then rolls her eyes, but Brienne turns back to watch the dragons against the slate sky. She might not see them again. 

An increasingly loud group are attempting to shoo Jaime away from the now standing woman, who is clutching his arm and looking up at him with something very appreciative in her eye. He looks to be on the verge of laughing. Normally he’s better at keeping himself blank in front of other people. This isn’t the moment to give up on that. 

The crying is starting up again, perhaps knocked into a looser and more desperate tone by the shock of the dragon. Brienne bullies her way past the glaring group to collect him, deciding that perhaps it would be kinder for everyone if they didn’t have to look at any Lannisters Who Aren’t for a little while.

***

“Where’s Pod?” Jaime asks. The courtyard is almost deserted but he twitches his head about as though he’s expecting Pod to be behind them somewhere. A few serving girls are passing through, all moving more leisurely than Brienne has ever seen. They all seem to have purpose.

“They’re finishing up Tyrion’s saddle for Bran now the workshop is clear,” Brienne says, even though she’s repeating herself. Jaime nods agreeably. 

“We could find Podrick’s greenhouse,” he suggests. “I’d prefer not to go back and lie in bed yet.” 

“It must be behind the other courtyard,” Brienne says. He glances quickly around and then reaches out to brush his knuckles against hers, where she has her hand on her belt. 

The second courtyard is empty. Jaime walks closer, arm brushing against hers. Most of the rubble they walked through the morning after the battle is still there and now the camp is cleared too. It looks dismal. When they reach the spot where Brienne had stopped them, back then, after they’d sent their letters, she stops again, looking across at Lady Catelyn’s battered Sept. There is a fresh broken tent pole thrown across the old rubble on the step. Jaime’s arm comes up around her waist. She jumps and looks down at the unfamiliar gesture. He’s pointedly not looking at her, surveying the wreckage. 

“We can help with this,” she says. They should do something about the sept at least; they are the only people here beholden to the quiet gods of their childhoods. He jerks his head in agreement. One handed brick laying, he’d said. One handed sewing. 

Above them, hinges creak. He steps hurriedly away. Brienne looks up at the window, to see Gilly’s friendly face, small like a high moon, looking down at them from the maester’s tower. Gilly waves, calling out a cheerful greeting. Mercifully she doesn’t seem to have the child with her. It’s a long drop. Brienne waves awkwardly back. Gilly says something, snatched away on the wind. 

“What?” yells Brienne, back at her. 

Jaime’s hand is light on her arm. “She says she can still see the men from up there.” Gilly shouts down much the same again, louder this time and Brienne can hear perfectly. 

“Oh,” says Brienne, turning her face back up. She waves again as Gilly suddenly disappears from the window. 

“You needn’t be so jumpy,” Brienne says, setting off towards the servant’s quarters when Gilly doesn’t reappear. “Everyone knows.” 

Jaime follows after her, picking up his pace to draw alongside again. She glances at him sidelong, to see his blank profile.

“How would they know that you mean to marry me?”

“No, not that,” she says, flushing. 

They push their way into the empty building, and he cranes his neck to look up the staircase disappearing up into windowless gloom. Brienne has to take a moment to consider what she knows of the castle’s shape. She heads for the closest door. It reveals a tiny nook filled with gardening equipment and broken spades. 

“Do you have the faintest idea where we’re going?” Jaime says beginning to sound amused again, peering over her shoulder. She slams the door and opens the next one along. It opens onto another little courtyard, older looking with uneven little rocks making up the walls. Brienne pulls the door open wide, victorious, and bows him through. 

Any garden that was is now buried under icy capped, barely disturbed snow. Footprints lead to the glass structure. It’s as strange as promised; greenery is pressed against all the windows, the condensation thick. There are actual green bushes planted around the base, the smallest dusting of snow surviving on the delicate, darkly vibrant leaves pushing out of the snow. They walk together, reverent and silent to the door. Brienne tries the handle. Then she tries again. It’s locked. Beside her, Jaime sighs and turns away. Brienne pulls off her glove and puts it to the window.

“It’s not warm,” she says. He’s at her shoulder immediately, tugging off his own glove with his teeth and dropping it from his mouth into the crook of his arm. He puts his hand up next to hers. Then he presses his face close to peer through the foggy, rippled glass. Brienne leans in too, feeling very ridiculous, staring so closely that her whole vision is a strange green fog. Condensation is thick on the inside. She touches her cold nose to the glass. Maybe it is a little warm.

“I don’t think your Lord Blacksmith or the Tarlys would have spread anything they think they know about us around,” he says quietly. She can see his breath on the glass. “Arya wouldn’t set out to hurt you.” Brienne sighs and steps away. 

“Everyone knows. Someone made a comment in the courtyard, days ago, before we’d really begun.”

He says lightly, “Which idiot?” He tucks his glove into his belt. When she avoids his eyes - she won’t give him Clegane’s name - he starts to look worried. “Who?” he says, “I can-.” He stops abruptly, hand on his bare belt, rueful. 

“It’s done. It doesn’t matter,” Brienne says, obstinately. People have always talked about her. This is such a novel type of gossip that she doesn’t quite know what it’s effects will be, or how it will stick to her reputation. They had hardly thought of her as a respectable lady before. Jaime turns his back on the greenhouse. 

“Brienne, the whole of Westeros knows you as the Maid of Tarth.”

“I’m a knight, not a maid,” she clenches her jaw around something that might be triumph, “we agreed this already,” she adds.

“We agreed,” says Jaime. ” _Us._ It can’t just be us. You’re actually respected here, and if you do mean to have Tarth, no matter how you downplay it’s significance, I do still think this is going to matter.” 

He turns away to try the handle again. It is, unsurprisingly, still locked. 

“Sansa-” Sansa Stark will let her do whatever she likes. She’s finally free. Men can say what they like about sins she never committed, but she can stop trying to cling onto their slippery ideas of virtue. She can’t make herself into a different shape, but she has a good arm, a Valyrian steel sword, and Sansa Stark, who won’t ask anything of her that would bring her dishonour. It doesn’t matter if people think her disgraced, so long as she knows it isn’t true.

“That might be enough so long as we never leave,” says Jaime. Brienne doesn’t see who on Tarth would be able to object. Plenty of people on Tarth had objected to her before. Besides, they’ve heard nothing from the Stormlands and there is going to be work to do here. She should see the girls safe, the wall patched, the guard trained. Lady Flint could be given a sword. She has purpose here, even if it can’t last forever. Besides she thinks it’s a question, like his offer to take up mending. 

“We will leave,” she says. “I just don’t know when.” 

Jaime says, “The queen never actually made me swear loyalty to her. Don’t you think she would likely have thought to ask me if she knew I would turn up at her court one day having acquired new colours as soon as she stripped me of the last? He glares down at the handle and shakes the whole door. They had this argument days ago.

“Stop that,” Brienne says. Jaime stops and turns to glare at her. 

“Did you ask Sansa if we could marry?”

“Yes,” says Brienne. Jaime makes a gesture with his hands that reminds her of Tyrion. 

“Brienne, you are not as transparent as you might think,” he says. Brienne’s is briefly so deep beneath the waves that her lungs hurt. 

“I’ll never lie to you.” It’s a struggle to get the words out. 

“I know,” he says, dismissively. “That’s not what I said.” He reaches out to catch her wrist, grimacing. “When did you ask?” His calluses skate down her palm. 

“When I asked you.” She no longer wants to blush at the memory of that, but she’s self conscious now of the delay. She hadn’t had an answer to give him. She’s not in the habit of reporting private conversations. 

“So she had time to tell the queen? 

Brienne says, “The queen has concerns other than Tarth and you, Jaime.” Jaime drops her hand. 

He says, “I’m not worried _for_ the queen.” He’s staring at her with his eyes widened exaggeratedly in frustration. She can’t really see who he is worried for. The dragons and the men are gone and he’s still here, alive, bound to her and safe. Everything keeps swimming along as she had hardly dared to hope. It’s not something she has much experience with. Perhaps the eyes of the seven turned to her when he knighted her. It’s not the most comfortable thought. He says, “Brienne, I’m trying to be practical.”

“I am being practical,” she says. She hasn’t thought about it until now, but: “We’ll marry in the godswood,” she says. She likes the shape of that. “We can skip the septon, the father and the feast.” Thank the gods they can skip the spectacle of the feast and surely, as a knight she can give herself away. Who will tell her no?

“Kneeling to the tree?” he says, consideringly. Brienne begins to suspect that this has been a somewhat persistent worry. “We could do that.” Now he looks cautiously pleased with the idea. Brienne hadn’t known about any kneeling to trees.

“Have you seen a northern ceremony?” she asks. 

“No. I’ve only heard stories, but men say…” He reaches for her wrist again. Men always have something to say about these things, she’s found. “Men say that a northern man carries his wife to the feast.” He pulls her arm up in slow motion, moves his right shoulder forwards. 

“Don’t!” she says, panicky and hot, her arms coming up to catch his collar automatically, holding him easily at arms length. 

“Alright,” he says. He leans his weight against her hands. 

“I don’t mean to keep arguing with you,” she says. 

“What about the part with the cloaks?” he says, apparently determined to continue. “They still do that. We’d have to swap places for it to have any meaning.” Brienne flushes, annoyed at her own predictability. She tugs him in slowly, until she can her cheek against the cool ends of his hair. He’s trying to drape flippancy over the bite in his voice. “Besides, I left all my old whites behind and everyone has seen puppet shows about my maidenly virtue.” Brienne decides to ignore that entirely.

“We don’t have anything in my colours.” It’s the practical thing, when the sensible thing to say would just be _no_. The more she thinks about it, the more she wishes she could avoid it all. He cranes away from her for a moment, speculative, trying to get a good look at her face. 

“It feels like a mockery for me fumble some brown fur over your shoulders,” he says. She steps back, keeping her hands on his arms. He looks quite sincere, his chin tipped up, only the slightest tension around his eyes. “Would it insult them? You’re a knight, not a maid.” She won’t do it. People would gossip about it. They would see it as a humiliation of them both, even if Jaime wouldn’t notice; even if she’s decided not to care. She can’t imagine suggesting such a thing to Sansa.

“Do men talk about what words are spoken?” she asks, without much hope.

“No,” he says, laughter slipping quickly back into his voice. “Strangely, they never speak about their vows.” He sobers again in a moment, reaching up to grip the wrist of her hand on his arm. “Whatever the words are, I can speak them,” he says. “I can promise.” He should know the vow before he makes it. She doesn’t know that she wants a promise given so lightly. 

“I don’t want easy words.” 

“This isn’t easy,” he says, very serious, jaw set like he’s still watching the queen’s army lead their horses over the hill. It’s what she had wanted him to say - she drops her hold on his shoulders, though he keeps hold of the wrist he has - but it’s simple enough for her. Tarth and Sansa are tangled responsibilities, while he is clear, separate and constant through both. He says, “I’ve given my word when it felt easy. This will be better.” She turns to look back at the plants, pressed green against the glass and so close. He swings her arm to call her attention back. “The castle will return to more conventional rhythms now the men are gone,” he says. “There will be servants coming and going.” Brienne glares at him. He smiles, perhaps a little wild, after all. “We should make the most of our freedom from propriety. Practice,” he says.

“The woman in the room beneath us complained of the noise.” 

“We were quiet,” he says, stricken. “I know we were.”

“The swords. The stamping,” she says. She had made the same mistake, but he seems to be struggling with it more. “I don’t think she-. It won’t matter soon.”

“Because we are to be married,” he says. Or, because they will leave. Or, because apparently Sansa will allow her to do whatever she likes, and this is a small private gift that she has decided to allow herself to want, as long as she is wanted in turn. Here, they might never have to push themselves into some shape of man and wife, for a brief moment of public scrutiny. He lifts his hand as if he means to try the door again, and just manages to stop himself. He pulls his glove back on, and Brienne does the same. 

“I’ll go back to the room now,” he says.

Their room has already been swept through by those relived of managing the men. The bed has been tidied, the fire built up and new water fetched. Jaime looks around dolefully. Brienne refuses when he awkwardly offers to take her cloak. They’ve made it strange by talking about it too much and besides, Brienne needs to see to the new guards. Sansa kept her here to see the castle safe, not to lie about in bed with Jaime. 

“I’ll be back soon,” she says. 

“Well,” he says, “I’ll be here.”

***

Brienne wakes as the sun is going down, curled against him on the bed. Her arm is thrown over his hip, her face against his spine. She finds that she can fit her chest, her stomach and thighs all along the back of him. It’s the absence of dragons, she realises, that has woken her. There’s no birdsong in their place. Brienne tries to unobtrusively remove the arm wrapped around him. He shifts onto his back, already awake. She blinks at the dull and darkening window.

“There will be feasting again,” he says, mouth tight, but he gets out from under the covers and goes to wash up in the fresh water the castle staff has fetched.

In the great hall they find Bran by the fire, Arya perched on a table nearby, holding a rather one sided looking conversation. She gestures them closer and they join her, putting their feet up on the bench next to hers. Shortly afterwards Sansa and a group of northern noble women file into the hall. Pod comes too, supporting a northern Lord whose leg was broken in the battle before the dead. 

“What we need,” says a round faced woman who must be at least seventy by the grooves in her neck, “is some reason to celebrate. Something to drink to.”

“We will no longer need to post guards at the wine stores. I can celebrate that,” says Sansa.

“But will we still be limiting servings?” grumbles the northern man. Podrick tries to catch her eye, amused. 

“I have something we could celebrate,” says Brienne and then she swallows as all their eyes come to rest heavily on her. She forces herself forwards, climbing off the bench and leaving Jaime behind, calling gruffly, “Podrick?” He understands immediately, but she has to stand there with her sword drawn while he tries to lever his charge down onto a bench. 

Actually laying the sword on his shoulders is subsumed in the buzzing awareness of every eye in the room resting on her. She’s soothed by Podrick’s serious face. She plods her way through the first of the words Jaime had spoken, feeling the weight of the ritual on her tongue. The gods she invokes are suddenly taking up space in the sparse room. There’s not enough air. She squares her shoulders and carries on until she’s lost in the rhythm and she can’t think of anyone but Pod, and her voice added now to the history of the words. Pod stares solemnly up at her even though she thinks it would be proper for him to lower his eyes, contemplate the gods and not her. 

When Pod stands, beaming, he only hesitates for a second before throwing himself up onto his toes to put his arms around her. They really have lost all sense of propriety. It breaks the spell they had woven and some of the women make cooing noises. Around her she can hear the room filling with noise. She doesn’t know how many stopped to watch; it’s not a northern ritual. She has to crouch somewhat to accept the embrace and it is very awkward. 

“I’m sorry, my lady. I promise I’m taking this so very seriously,” Pod whispers. 

She puts her nose briefly into his hair. She blinks away the burning behind her eyes and pats his back heavily. Sansa is standing across from them pressing her lips together in a smile. 

“That’s a wonderful excuse for a song and some wine,” says the round faced woman. “Well done, dear. I do hope your gods don’t mind us butting in.” The others are moving about, calling for servants who are for the first time in a while appearing in greater numbers than are needed. Some will be able to eat on the same long tables with the remaining gentry tonight, as they should, even with the rather large number of Free Folk remaining. One of the youngest women is talking loudly and excitedly about a song they know that will make everyone weep. 

Brienne turns within the milling crowd as Podrick fusses to straighten his clothes. She finds Jaime standing against the dancing fire, smiling at her, small and genuine. He comes to them, although he doesn’t seem to be able to summon any words, instead reaching out to inconspicuously grip her hand, bundled up where their thick cloaks collide. Then he turns to Pod. 

“Ser Podrick,” he says, smiling brightly with all his teeth, then he thumps him solidly. 

Podrick puts his hands up to grasp Jamie’s shoulders, almost an embrace. He’s doing the desperately sincere widening he likes to do with his eyes. Jaime looks a little unnerved. Pod takes mercy on him and retreats. 

“Tyrion will be delighted,” says Jaime. Pod tilts his jaw up and puffs his chest out. 

“Would it be strange if I were to write to him? Once he’s at Casterly Rock. So long as we can spare the ravens.”

“Of course not,” says Brienne. If Tyrion finds it strange he can keep it to himself. “I’m sure you could write to your family as well.”

“Oh yes, thank you, my lady” says Podrick, “but Casterly Rock will likely send word along.” Brienne puts her hand onto Oathkeeper’s hilt. She tries to arrange her face into something other than a frown.

“You could return to the Westerlands once we have peace, or before, it’s your choice now,” Brienne tells him, more insistently. “I won’t ask you to stay here now.”

“I’m alright, thank you, my lady,” says Podrick as Jaime’s shoulder brushes against hers. The cups begin to be passed around and the hall further floods with people. Pod slips away to find a jug of wine. 

“You did so well with him,” Jaime tells her.

“He did well with himself.” 

The look he gives her is half agony, half adoration. She pats him awkwardly on the arm, aware of the full hall around them, he catches her hand briefly in his. No one seems to be taking up their usual seats, instead the whole castle is milling about. Pod is standing quietly as a group his own age, most of them even shorter than he is, prod at him excitedly. She’s glad he has friends here. A couple of northerners have arrived back with instruments. Arya materialises behind them, weaving idly through the crowd towards Sansa who has taken up the chair in the centre of the high table. Brienne goes to sit down in her proper place. Jaime drifts in her wake and sits nest her, pressed up against her side, so they can both look at out the strange mood of the people. Someone passes them full bowls and Brienne applies herself to hers heartily. Food is good for nerves. Jaime sighs and tears at his bread only a little before setting about his own. 

“He’ll follow you anywhere, you do know that?” he says, conversationally to his bowl. She nods awkwardly. That is very apparent. 

“Good,” he says, emphatically. 

Pod joins them. Gilly and Sam too, a little collection of southerners. They make a toast to Pod’s knighting and his good future. It’s loud in the hall. It looks like it pleases Sansa inordinately. The people who had been serving take up places at the ends of the tables to eat. The wine does eventually reach it’s limit, before the mood turns maudlin, which Brienne thinks it could very easily. Sansa comes down from the high table to walk among the people. The songs turn to war and loved ones longed for, tipping the mood in the absence of wine. The girl who had wanted to make everyone cry takes up her flute. 

“My lady, let’s sit closer,” says Pod. There are benches opening up near the musicians as those long in the tooth begin to drift away to their beds. There are chairs free by the fire. She demurs. Jaime catches her hand and presses his thumb surreptitiously over her knuckles. 

“I’ll be back in the room,” he says, and Brienne lets him go. Earlier she saw him put a knife in his belt. Podrick says he will sing again. Brienne stays. Arya has apparently consented to be part of the strange, almost festivities and they take a seat by the great fire next to Bran, who requires nothing by way of conversation. It is the warmest spot.

In Evenfall, while her father ruled over a peaceful island, they would have evenings like this only rarely, preferring to celebrate outside or in open rooms while it was still light. It did a person good to feel the sun. In this hall you would hardly know if you were wasting away the short stretch of sunlight afforded to you. On Tarth, during the winter she most clearly remembers, they had simply worn more clothes and carried on as they always had. What will Tarth be like, if this winter is as dire as the Starks say and the days grow shorter and colder until there is no more light? The marble will hold onto the cold worse than the rough Winterfell stone. Someone will have to make sure the children can see the great, bright skies painted on all the walls in the oldest rooms. 

Arya disappears briefly and comes back with a few cups of illicit wine, that she pretends to reveal with exaggerated drama from inside her cloak. Bran pretends not to notice, so Brienne laughs for her and takes her cup. 

“No guards by the wine stores?” says Brienne, as though guards by the wine stores could, or would stop Arya. 

“The group you picked are probably the best we could have hoped for,” says Arya. 

“Thank you,” says Brienne, then, “I thought you meant to go with your brother.” Arya and Bran both turn to look at her in synchronised consideration. Brienne drinks more of her wine. Arya drinks too and then tops them both up with Bran’s rejected cup. It’s comfortable and safe and Brienne does not mind. She never stayed by the fire when there were songs in Tarth. 

“It’s not time to go yet,” says Bran. 

“Oh, don’t start that,” says Arya, drinking again, “But no, it isn’t time to go yet.”

“When will it be time?” says Brienne, then hearing her plaintive voice, she puts her cup down very deliberately. 

“Not for a very long while yet,” says Bran. 

“I’ll go when I won’t have to walk at the speed of the wagons,” says Arya, which means fairly soon.

“What about the wolves; what will Winterfell eat?” says Brienne. 

Arya says, “I thought she would come to me when I was home and smelled like myself again.” She’s been drinking the whole time. She sounds worse than Bran. Brienne pats her cautiously on the shoulder and finds that she has to set her cup down to do it. She puts it down again even more deliberately.

“Pod is singing now,” she tells Arya. “Doesn’t he have a wonderful voice.” The pride is up against her ribs again. 

“Evenings like these I used to tease Sansa until she cried,” says Arya wistfully. They both watch Sansa listening to one of the women animatedly explaining something involving her legs. “I can’t tease her now,” she says. She drains her glass. 

Jaime drops to crouch next to their bench. 

“Oh, hello.”

“Save me from the stable boy,” he says. “He’s taken to insulting my horse.” 

She puts her hand in his hair. He blinks at her, but he worries about nothing, so she leaves it there.

“That horse is perfect,” she says. “Why is he complaining.” 

He shakes his head and dislodges her hand. He slides his eyes briefly towards Arya. 

“You could go now, while he is distracted,” Brienne tells him. The boy is indeed sprinting for the doors. Arya is up and moving before Jaime is on his feet. It takes Brienne even longer to start, Jaime tugging her along by her belt. 

“Gulls!” a woman is shouting. “Gulls, gulls, gulls.” Brienne can hear them now too. The hall spills out into the courtyard. They all stare up into the black sky, trying to pick out movement. Waiting to see if they are only passing by. Then, very clearly a trio land on the roof of the stables.

“Bow, bows,” comes back the call, much quieter. She isn’t sure who starts it, but all the archers scatter madly across the courtyard. Everyone else stands still as an anticipatory silence falls.

“Storms at the coast,” says Jaime. 

“Who gives a fuck!” hisses the red haired serving girl next to him. Back in the hall, Arya is clearly having a very intense fight with Bran while she strings a bow. Then a couple of Free Folk rush into the hall to do the same by candlelight and she scoops her hands along the tables gathering up crumbs into a pouch and hurries back out into night before they can beat her to it. 

Jaime sits down near Bran and picks up Brienne’s cup. He holds it out in question. She shrugs. She feels a little warm and like she might like to strip off her cloak and maybe even her boots, even though the doors are open. She doesn’t think she should drink any more wine. Jaime drinks it for her. 

“He won’t be at the coast yet,” she says. Tyrion was travelling with wagons. 

“I know,” he says. “Are you an archer?” 

“Hardly. Did you ever-?”

“Only passable,” he says. “This will be great sport for those that can. It will be nearly impossible in the dark.” Sansa is by the door watching them. Brienne follows her gaze and gets to watch when Bran’s eyes roll straight back in his head. She takes Jaime’s arm and tows him away. 

“What?” he says. 

“Let’s see this sport,” she tells him and he smiles at her. 

The Free Folk win what turns into a bit of a competition. Arya looks sincerely put out by this, and then embarrassed when Sansa makes a show of congratulating her for bringing in three, the largest individual catch. 

“More music!” says someone too young to still be awake. 

There is more music until there is a wedding. Brienne is drifting a little, her head in her hand and Jaime slightly more alert beside her. They are listening to Pod sing again, and with every moment that no one suggests Jaime goes back to their room, Brienne feels a little sleepier. The wedding has her on her feet with her sword drawn before she’s really aware what she is doing. 

The man who has the screaming woman over his shoulder freezes, all the way across the hall and turns to her, without putting the woman down. Brienne puts her foot up on the table, meaning to head over there.

And then the woman says, “Why have we stopped?” in a voice so clearly ringing with disappointment that Brienne understands without really understanding and gets back down from the table. Sansa, who looks a little more white faced than usual sweeps in between them, and then the hall unsticks itself. The song picks up, now even rowdier, the woman’s screaming - so obviously affected now Brienne is properly paying attention - starts up again and everyone stops staring at her at last. She sits down heavily. Jaime, who is still standing, sits down on the table and puts his feet up on the bench next to her. Something very strange is happening to his mouth. He touches her face, seemingly compulsively, and keeps swallowing what she’s pretty sure is hysterical laughter.

What he says is, “Are you alright?”

 _“Fine,”_ she says.

It’s only playing. Like their fighting. Like their arguing, sometimes. Except for all the ways in which it isn’t. If she thought it was real, then other people were watching and thinking the same. No one else had drawn their sword. Jaime puts his hand on her shoulder and squeezes until the tension falls out of the muscle. It was only a game. That woman was _happy._ She should get to be happy. 

Sansa comes by to say, “They explained it to me in advance. He’s stealing her, but he had checked to make sure she doesn’t try too hard to stab him. They’re married now.” Sansa shrugs helplessly. 

“Oh,” says Brienne, strangely disappointed. She’d thought that - being free - they might have chosen to keep the promising and do away with whatever newly awful variation on a bedding ceremony that was. Sansa smiles at her. 

“Don’t worry. You looked very heroic coming across the table. It will add excitement to the re-tellings.” Sansa pauses. “Are you alright?” she says quietly, twisting the two of them away from Jaime. 

“I’m very awake all of a sudden,” says Brienne. “Are you alright?” Sansa doesn’t look so pinched now.

“About the same,” says Sansa.

“It was a lovely evening,” says Brienne. Sansa smiles at her, and looks about at the spread out murmuring groups and the mess of plates abandoned at the end of one table with satisfaction.

***

Jaime walks her back through the empty corridors with an arm around her waist. 

“I would say I can’t believe you went up over the table like that, except that I can,” he says. “I’m amazed that man didn’t drop her and run. He must really love her. What a sight!” 

“Did I look so very ridiculous?” says Brienne, uncomfortably reliving Sansa describing her as heroic and imagining what those retellings will be like.

“Ridiculous? You looked like something out of a story. Are you really alright?” Brienne is beginning to feel alright. “The way your foot hit that table. The sound of the sword. Were you not aiming for it to look like that?”

“I really don’t know what I was doing,” Brienne says. 

“You were brilliant,” he says, still giving all the impetus for their movement. And yes, Brienne is beginning to feel better. 

“Where’s Pod?” 

“He has friends his own age,” says Jaime, and it suddenly occurs to Brienne, quite what that means. 

“Did he tell you? Why didn’t he tell me?” Jaime stops pulling her along, but she keeps moving. He holds out his arms.

“I really don’t know why he told _me,_ ,” he says. They round the corner to their staircase and clamber up it, both a little heady with an excess of sleep and drink that they are both now unaccustomed to and the sheer lateness of the hour.

Jaime flicks the door open and he hefts off his cloak, takes hers, straightens the chair by the fire and presses her into it. 

“Sword,” he says, holding out his hand, and she unbuckles the belt and gives it to him. “Boots,” he says, going to dump everything back on the desk. She takes the boots off and stretches he feet out in the rug. The fire needs tending, but it’s still licking heat up her back. She watches him move about the room. The common problem, she realises, in all their arguments, is everyone else.

“We could skip the kneeling and the tree,” Brienne says. Jaime hops to pull one boot off looking at her inquisitively. “The cloaks too.” Avoid the buzzing sensation of everyone looking being directed at him. “We could just tell Sansa that we’re married. Who is to say we aren’t.”

“The gods?” Jaime says. He gathers up her boots as well and puts the line of them neatly by the fire. He pokes the black wood on top about until it breaks apart, and crouches to get everything set for the night. 

“Which gods?” Brienne says. He shrugs. The seven, all together in the tree? The one who brought Jon Snow back to life? Whatever Bran says is living in him? There are so many of them now. “They don’t care who we love.” Jaime stands and takes his gloves off, dropping them on the hearth. He doesn’t look convinced. 

“When I knighted you, I didn’t feel like I was speaking to any gods. I don’t really think that’s the point.” Brienne understands that. She’s done it herself now, the same number of times that he has. She knows just as much. 

“I didn’t kneel to the warrior,” she says, “Not even for a little bit.” Jaime turns back to her, flicks the knife out of his belt and puts it above the fire. 

“You knelt to me,” he says. She’d thought he’d like this idea. Surely it resolves all his worries. 

“You always said you could do it,” she says. 

“Do what?” he says. Even though she knows he remembers.

“You said today that you could lift me,” she says. Throw her down. 

“I could.” Jaime looks a little more interested, then he amends, “If I had too.” 

“So?” she says.

“You’ve picked up some very strange ideas from the wildlings,” he says. 

_“Free Folk,”_ she corrects. 

“Free Folk,” he agrees. He does not come over and attempt to pick her up. Brienne gets up, picks up the chair and puts it off the rug. She sheds layers until she’s in her shirt and trousers. He mimics her. She backs up until she’s got room to manoeuvre. She thinks she might also have picked up some very strange ideas from him. As he walks out to match her it occurs to her that he hadn’t actually won any of these fights. Anticipation prickles up her arms. 

“You’re looking very prepared,” he says. She has arranged herself so that she’s ready to move. Feet light, and spread for balance. Distantly, she recognises that this may not be a particularly well thought out plan.

“Sansa says they’re only pretending that it’s a surprise,” she says, although, she suspects that can’t alway be the case.

“I did not see this coming,” says Jaime, “You’re getting a very authentic experience.” Then he rushes her. She moves out of his way and kicks his knee out.

“Sorry,” she says, before she realises that he has a hold on her arm and she’s going down with him. 

“Oh fuck,” he says, as she lands heavily with her knee on the back of his thigh. She yanks her arm back and scrambles up and away. He pops back up and hops about hitting his leg when he finds her backed away to the other side of the rug. Brienne decides to go on the offence. “Fuck,” he says, again, but then manages to end up on top of her when they hit the ground. From there on out he’s furiously silent. He tries to flip her, she yanks him forward to drive his head into the floor, he catches himself and puts his knee directly into her stomach. It means she can tip him off without too much trouble but it also genuinely hurts. 

He grimaces an apology, and then they’re both up on their knees, grappling to get a better grip on each others shirts. Jaime moves on to trying for her hair. Her arms are a little longer, which should mean she has the advantage, but Brienne starts to feel the bubbling hysteria again and it’s making it hard to feel her hands. They must looks so stupid. He gives up and ducks under her swatting hands. He puts his shoulder into her chest and gets up on one knee - she thinks it might be attempt to lift her, or knock her backwards - but actually he’s just helped her to her feet. She drapes her full weight over him and then just, walks away once he’s got her up. She’s definitely not managing to hide her smile. She dusts feeling back into her hands and sets her stance again. He’s got the fond look she likes. 

Next pass, he manages to twist her about by the arm, tucking it up behind her back, which is rankly unfair, because she showed him this, and he’s too low when she throws her head back to brain him, which is she realises, now she hasn’t connected, is probably for the best. 

“Sorry,” she says, then she throws her other arm back, grabs him by some combination of shirt and neck, drops almost to one knee and drags him over her shoulder. He lets go of her arm rather than dislocate it, which she appreciates. He tries to drag them both sideways, back to the rug, but she has both arms around him now, and all he can do is cling to her hips and make a breathlessly outraged huff of air into her stomach. With a great effort of co-ordination, mostly made possible by the fact he doesn’t actually hit her with his knee _very_ hard, she gets herself back up on both feet. He’s really fucking heavy once his legs leave the ground, although he immediately goes very carefully rigid. It helps. She takes a slightly weaving step, breathes out a flustered laugh, and then stops to hoik him further back onto her shoulder. 

He makes a pained grunt, even though it’s his hip bones that are crushing everything in her shoulder. She staggers sideways when she tries to move and then she can feel his stomach jump and flutter against her when he he starts to silently laugh. “This is more undignified than I expected,” he says on a gasp. He can’t see her face so Brienne doesn’t attempt to sort out the very stupid thing happening to her expression. He says, “Should I start screami-. Fuck! Don’t drop me on my head.” That does end on a shout. When her silent giggling takes over again she weaves another step. He’s throwing her off by moving his legs. 

“Any other advice,” she says, trying to find the equilibrium to move again. 

“We’re already in your room,” he says. “This counts, alright. Put me down. We’ll be married.” Brienne considers fighting him on it. Arguing for the game of it. Bedding ceremonies see both parties deposited on the bed. She tips backwards and lets him push up off the grip he has on her hip. He slides, somewhat backwards, mostly sideways, off her shoulder. 

They reach for each other immediately, and she walks him backwards, stroking both hands over his sides, feeling his tight around the back of her neck, until she walks him into the bed. Experimentally, she reaches out to push him down onto it. He doesn’t go.

“Pod might come back tonight,” he says. He puts a hand up to smooth a disordered bit of hair behind her ear. She takes hold of his hips, and ducks to kiss his shoulder, pressing her eyes into his neck. She pushes him onto the desk instead. 

With Jaime sat forwards on the edge of desk, kissing at her chest and tugging at her belts, Brienne decides that she wants to learn something knew. Her neck is already cricked from bending further that usual. When she stands back up, he comes with her, a moment before his weight indicates he’s got at least one foot back on the floor. He makes a loudly appreciative noise and then pulls away to press a hand to her mouth, looking at the floor, like she’s the one disturbing Lady Flint, and like they haven’t been stomping about and slamming each other into the floor.

“We’re married,’ she says, feeling more than a little of that old flush. He’s pink too. “Swap with me,” she says. 

When she’s sitting, he slides in to press their hips together. She feels that she’s become quite proficient at kissing him. She gathers him in closer, and before she gets distracted by the stroking hand at her hip, she reaches for the heat between his legs. She’s quite sure she isn’t going to do this well, but she’s seen men make the motion - how complicated can it be. She smiles into the noise he makes and reaches up to tug at his hair. 

“So, are we really married?” he says, fingers still moving where she’s holding him, carding through the edges of the hair there, where it’s softer and shorter. “Does this count?” 

“I don’t see why not,” says Brienne. She lets his wrist go, and he skims lower, tugging experimentally where the hair thickens. “I’ll tell Sansa,” she says. She tries to hold her hips still. It’s too wet, when he touches her. No purchase, no friction. She’s so hot that she feels it wouldn’t take much. She’s barely perched on the edge of the table. 

“You could fuck me,” he says. Her hips twitch and her breath comes sharper. He presses the sides of their faces together with a nudge of the gold hair. 

“I have been fucking you,” she says. For her septa, the mechanics of fucking and being fucked had clearly been important semantic destinations that she hadn’t been able to vocalise. For the women who followed Renly’s army the distinction had been irrelevant. For Renly, presumably, the difference must have been altered. 

“I’ll explain later,” he says, still looking pink.

“I know that men can…” she says. His fingers retreat and he presses his knuckles into the ropes of her thighs. That sings through the beginning of stiffness there. 

“You said that was a filthy rumour,” he says. Brienne does remember saying that. 

“ You were being foul,” she says. “I don’t want anyone talking about them. I don’t see how it was any of our concern.” He breathes out laughter against her neck. 

“I thought you didn’t know.”

“No,” she says. “It’s just that everyone should keep their noses out.” He taps her thigh and runs his knuckles against the lie of the hair there. She puts her teeth against his ear. 

“Brienne,” he says, twitching. “You could tell Gendry, when you see him again. I think that’s the kind of thing he wanted to hear. Something that made any of them happy.” 

"I'll think about it," she says. He slides his fingers into her, and then when he draws them back out, everything is too wet again. It takes endless, long shivery pulls of his bunched fingers, her rolling into him, too desperate now for embarrassment, and the dulled insistent pressure of him between her legs, to build the sticky heat between them again. He gathers her up with his right arm, and then his hand is trapped between her and his hip, and it’s harsh enough finally, when she snaps down into his stroking. He urges her on with the dull pressure of his hand at her the back of her thigh, and he kisses her and lets her bite at his jaw, and whispers to her that he loves her, and that he’ll tell everyone that they’re married, if she will do the same. 

There is a neatly folded cloth by the fresh water and they wipe themselves down; a lick and a promise. It’s good enough when they can bathe tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. 

“I’ll tell Sansa when I next see her,” Brienne says, pulling herself back into enough of her things that she could leap out of bed if necessary. “I’ll tell her that we’re married,” she clarifies. Sansa was a child when Renly died and it’s none of her business. 

“Tell Gilly,” he says, unbuckling his hand. “She’ll actually think it’s good news.”

The knock comes once she’s already asleep. She feels Jaime sit up besides her, and her neck is at just the right angle, her feet so warm and her hands so cool, that she does not bother to move. 

“Should I get it?” he says. Brienne frowns. It’s fine for him to answer her door in the middle of the night, what else is the point of marriage. She hears him grab the knife from the mantlepiece, and the knock comes again. She gives up and starts trying to disentangle herself from the furs. 

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, to her or the person behind the door He drops Oathkeeper across the foot of the bed, darting across the room, and slits open the door open. 

A woman’s voice greets him, somewhat familiar, friendly and quiet, and not surprised to see him. Brienne sits back against the headboard. She can’t see who it is, but she can see him putting out his arms for something. Jaime murmurs back, equally polite. Brienne gets a brief flash of Lady Flint’s profile, before he closes the door on her with his shoulder. Jaime climbs back onto the bed with a pile of fabric and small leather shoes held between his hands. 

“For you,” he says, and awkwardly tips them out onto the bed. Two of the shoes are odd boots that clearly come from different sets. The other two both look a little large. In the hand he had under the pile, his knife is gripped in reverse and pointed inward on his wrist. He shrugs a little self-consciously and goes to put it and Oathkeeper back on the desk. She thumbs through the neatly folded garments. Three whole tunics of various widths, a short shirt, some woollen socks and stockings with the feet cut out and tacked up. On top is a thick shawl with a pink sun carefully embroidered. Brienne runs her fingers over it. Jaime tucks his face into his shoulder and tries to suppress a yawn. 

“They were for Littler Sam. I don’t know that they’ll like this,” she says, showing him the sun. Jaime points out the two odd shoes in answer. “Oh don’t start,” she says. “I’m sure she did her best.” 

“I really don’t think he’s going to object, it will only be the second littlest Tarly,” by which she supposes he means Lord Tarly. Brienne hopes he isn’t the type to take offence. She’s warmed up to him, seeing the way he looks at Gilly at dinner every night. 

Jaime sorts everything back into its pile and then he carries it all over and dumps it onto the trunk. He checks the fire behind it’s guard and then he hurries back to bed. He curls up against her back and sticks his cold feet down next to hers. 

He asks, “What did Sansa say when you asked to marry me?”Brienne had been on the verge of sleep again. 

“She asked if Tyrion had promised me a large dowry, and then,” she recalls, “she said she had previously thought of me as a sensible person.” 

Jaime starts laughing at the first, and then has to bury an undignified snort against the back of her neck at the last. She tugs his arm around her. 

“Grave insults to us both,” he says. His smile is wide enough that she can feel his teeth where he’s pressed into the top of her spine.

***

The second knock comes as soon as she smiles. But the light is different, dark still, but with no moon lighting the window. Jaime’s arm is still around her and he’s a dead weight thrown across her back. She rolls onto her side and nudges him off. The second knock comes a second time. Or maybe she just heard them coming. She clambers out of bed with only the glow of the guarded fire to orient her. Jaime pulls the furs back over himself. He went last time. She pulls the neck of her shirt tighter, but her tunic is buried somewhere in a jumble of all their clothes. She puts her boots on just in case, and when she opens the door, she keeps one foot against the inside of it. 

Pod is at the door, Gilly and Tarly behind him. Littler Sam is here, which is good, because she can give him the clothes. She steps back and opens the door for them.

“What’s happened?” She can have her sword on in a moment, but her tunic is buried and her armour is in the trunk. 

“You have a letter,” Podrick says. 

Jaime sits up in bed and, seeing the lot of them staring down at him, clutches the blankets up to his waist. 

“Hello,” he croaks. He looks at Brienne, a little wide eyed, clearly having only just woken. “Hello, Littler Sam,” he says, trying to shuffle his way casually out of bed. “Brienne has some shoes for you.” He stands up. 

Littler Sam shrinks away and presses his face in Gilly’s shoulder. He says, “Oh no.” Gilly and Tarly both gape down at him, astonished. “Oh no?” says Gilly. He’s very still and silent. Clearly they hadn’t known he could talk either. Brienne plucks the letter from Tarly’s slack fingers. Jaime has got his tunic on over his shirt, and has retrieved his boots. He looks at her in question. 

Podrick heads for the mantlepiece. Brienne passes Jaime and pushes the mess on the desk aside so that the scroll can sit safely. He hands her a tunic. 

“Is that--?” he asks, but her head is inside the fabric. Pod brings her a candle, and she crouches down and opens the scroll while she’s still blinking at the light. 

_My dear child,_ reads Brienne. 

She sets the letter down carefully as the wave of emotion she’d pressed down into Winterfell’s frozen mud twelve days ago shrieks back up through her spine, and she begins, entirely unwillingly to cry strange silent tears. Jaime kneels down beside her, which makes everything even worse.

“He’s alive,” she tells him, “I don’t know why I’m crying.” Brienne gasps out the last of the furiously balled tension and fills her chest with new air. Pod is watching her with sympathetically damp eyes. She wipes her nose on her sleeve. She seizes the letter again, blinking at the letters that swim, even though her father’s familiar writing is always neat. Jaime sits back on his haunches, looking up at her with the small closed-mouth smile she likes on his lips. 

She clears her throat. To the assembled room she summarises as she reads; “Some of the Golden Company came through on their way to King’s Landing and he could not reply until they were gone. ” She dashes at her eyes again, feeling abruptly more grounded. There should be no reason for Tarth to fear Cersei’s sellswords. She blinks down at the cheerful continuance in his elegant hand. 

“The island had its first snow. An old horse of mine has died, but she had two fine foals.” She blushes a little at the inanity, but it warms her. “The queen - _Cersei_ \- has warned that a Targaryen has returned to burn the cites in mad revenge for her tyrannical father. He asks if Daenerys has truly enslaved dragons who breathe fire that burns green and gold.” She smiles down, hearing his doubtful tone. Podrick takes a sharp step backwards. “I don’t think he believes the dragons exist yet.” 

“My lady, I think you might need to show this to Lady Sansa,” says Pod. 

“I will, but we knew Cersei would say these things. The people will soon see there’s no truth to any of it,” reassures Brienne, but when she looks to Jaime, his face has drained of colour and the smile might never have been there at all. She has to consciously pull her eyes from him, not understanding, wanting to know the rest. 

“He asks us to tell Gendry he’s glad to hear there will be a Baratheon in Storm’s End and says that he wishes the boy the best in his inheritance of all his father’s titles.” Brienne pauses to re-read the line. “Well,” Brienne says, “I can’t tell if he knows that sounds treasonous towards everyone.” Possibly she was too effusive in her praise of Gendry. Tarly, now bouncing his child in his arms, blows tiredly through his mouth.

“I’m so glad he doesn’t seem to have any interest in the throne,” he says. It’s a sentiment Brienne shares. 

“Does he say anything else about Cersei and dragon fire?” asks Jaime. Brienne observes with trepidation the shocking green of his eyes, so close to the candle.

“No,” Brienne says, “What’s wrong with you?”

“Why would your father think that dragon’s fire burns green?” Gilly asks, “Isn’t it funny how these stories travel.” Littler Sam huffs unhappily as Gilly fusses with his hair. 

“I have clothes for him on the trunk,” says Brienne. “And shoes, all from Lady Flint.”

Jaime pushes back into her and snatches the letter from her hands. He stares down at it. 

He says, “Mercy.”

She catches his wrist and yanks her letter back, holding onto him. She’s never heard him swear by any of the gods, let alone the mother, except for the moment he knighted her. It can’t be a shock to _him_ that Cersei would lie. Jaime tries to take his wrist back.

“Podrick is right,” Jaime says, “show it to Sansa.” 

“I’m going to,” says Brienne. “What’s wrong with the two of you?” Podrick looks actively agitated. 

“Please, Brienne, just show it to Sansa,” Jaime says, agonised, and then he manages to rip his arm from her grip and he goes back to putting on his boots. He throws her jacket towards her and then he bundles his cloak, jacket and his knife and slams his way out of the room. Littler Sam stops making noise. Brienne stands up. 

“He has a complicated relationship with his sister,” says Pod mildly, but he still looks panicked, and that isn’t actually a placating thing to say. It’s unsettling. Tarly’s face contorts. Pod flushes. “My lady, should we go?”

“And wake her?” says Brienne. Sansa gets so little sleep. 

“I’m sorry about your horse,” says Gilly, tactfully ignoring Pod, which means she knows all about Jaime. She’s collected the clothes from the top of the trunk and is waving the shoes in Little Sam’s face. She lowers her voice, “I know the woman who dries the tea leaves here now. I can get you some. To trade for these?” Tarly goes spectacularly redder. Brienne doesn’t know what she’d want tea for. 

“Yes, alright. Thank you, Gilly.” 

“What we mean to say is, thank you,” says Tarly. “Would you like to hold Sam? Little Sam, can you say thank you?”

“No thank you,” says Brienne. Stepping out of range. She looks down at her father’s letter. It ends with a question, disguised as reassurance, _You will always be welcome and wished for here at Evenfall._ She allows herself a moment with the words, brushing her thumb over the ink. They aren’t a demand. She reads back to where she had stopped. There are details about the Golden Company. It does not sound as though they behaved as guests. There were not enough men to send to war, but there were enough men to repel raiders. They should have tried. She glances up to see Pod still watching her, his face pinched, clearly holding himself back from speaking.

The letter tells her that her father expects the sellswords to return, after whatever happens on the mainland, on their way back to Essos. Brienne’s decision is made. The respite is over. They might not have much time; sellswords, even expensively paid ones, might not hold when they see the dragons. They’ll need to pass around the queen’s army. 

Pod breaks. He says, coming very close, and speaking very quietly, “My lady, when Lord Tyrion lit the bay up with his wildfire everything burned green and gold.” Her heart turns over. “Perhaps it’s a coincidence,” he says, “But Jaime seemed… with what everyone has been saying about the Great Sept.” Pod doesn’t even know about the wildfire already under King’s Landing. She gets all the way to the door without her sword or cloak. She wrenches the door open. Jaime is sitting on the steps that lead further up the tower, hand in a fist in front of his face. 

“Are you going?” he says.

“We’re going,” she agrees.

***

Pod grabbed her cloak, gloves Oathkeeper, so she’s not frozen when she knocks on Sansa’s door, the five of them gathered behind her. Arya answers, but Sansa is not asleep, and there are other people in the solar; Clegane with his boots up by the fire, a woman taking notes at the desk, and another perched behind Sansa on the bed, taking down or putting up her hair. Brienne can not tell which it is. Perhaps she’s just re-doing it. Only the woman with the hair pins is asked to leave when Brienne produces the letter. Sansa and Arya both understand it without having it spelled out to them. 

“I’ll ride after Jon,” Arya says, looking up from her turn with the letter. “I can take the smaller party ahead.” Jaime flinches against Brienne’s back. She turns to Pod and gestures for him to take Jaime out. 

“Alright,” says Sansa, discarding the letter she had just begun, “Wait a moment longer at least. I’m writing something for the Queen. We will be telling the lords about her father’s final wish. It will give credence to the claim.”

“It will associate the queen with the wrong type of fire,” Arya says. ”She won’t like that.” Sansa quirks an eyebrow at her. 

“If we’ve begun, I don’t see that she’ll have any choice. She should send her own messages. Jaime’s word alone, through my hand, might not carry as much weight as we need. Make sure she sends a rider back with what she writes. Their party can not spare the ravens and the more time everyone has to dwell on it, the better. Perhaps Dorne and the Storm Lords will respond to this.” She turns with satisfaction to her letter. 

“Anyone with gold invested in King’s Landing will be very interested,” says Clegane, “I’m not sure about the rest.” 

“Well, we’ll give them the opportunity. At least, it's part of a story everyone already knows,” says Sansa. 

Podrick slips back into the room. They stand there watching Sansa and the other woman write. Clegane gets up from the fire and walks in a wide circuit about the room, stretching out his back. Brienne thinks he might have been dozing. His sword is lying under his chair. The woman swaps her paper with Sansa, and they both begin to scribble again. Podrick should have gone with Jaime. He’s not supposed to wander about by himself. 

“My lady…” starts Brienne. 

“You’ll be wanting to travel south to Tarth,” Sansa says, putting the finishing touches to her letter and handing it off to Arya to be examined. 

“Yes,” says Brienne. “The Golden Company. I share my father’s concerns.”

“Of course,” says Sansa, “Your family. Your people. It’s only right that you should want to go to them.” She digs a larger blank scroll out of her desk and then spreads another for reference. She and the woman confer over the details. Brienne turns to glare at Podrick.

“He said he'd be fine,” he whispers. Brienne nods. He’ll be sat in her room. She’d just like to check. 

The woman gets up from the desk and retreats a little as Sansa digs through a locked draw and produces yet another scroll. She has to hold this one open with unlit candles balanced over each end. She starts writing again.

“I can’t spare you any men but I’ll write you something that will grant you free passage and aid from anyone who loves me in the North and beyond. You’ll take Podrick Payne, sorry, Ser Podrick,” she inclines her head to Pod, who is standing tensely at Brienne’s side, “and Jaime?”

“I’ll leave as soon as we’re ready,” she says, “If you’ll dismiss me for a moment, my lady?” Clegane has come to a halt back by the fire, and he’s watching her curiously. He glances at the door before she moves. 

“If you wish. Come back before you go.” Arya walks around the desk pointing out something in the letter for the queen and Sansa is distracted again. It’s for the best. 

Pod trails after her back to their room. Brienne grips Oathkeeper and walks very quickly. She doesn’t run. Every time she thinks the worst of him, she only manages to insult him. But this might not be the worst; it is his responsibility. His people. His family. It would just be stupid beyond all reasonable expectations. He had told her he hadn’t meant to die.

***

Her room is empty, the fire still low behind its screen. The cloak Sansa had given him has been left over the chair. He’s been back to the room. She doesn’t check the chest for his things. She’d thought, what? That he would be in her bed, feeling sorry for himself. She sits down and Pod hovers about her. She should have told Sansa immediately, even if she is over-reacting, and had Clegane alert the men on the gate. 

She should at least check the stables. She should have gone there first. Finding a sword will take time, provided he has the sense to take a sword. She’s not entirely sure how long she’s been sitting here with her hands fisted and Oathkeeper awkwardly twisted on her belt. Her father hadn’t had her chained. She’s not used to indecision. When she looks up, Pod is perched on the very edge of the chair by the fire, anxiously working his hands together. She stands and he follows her without question.

It’s snowing. Fat, heavy flakes melt wetly into her hair. She marches through it. It would be impossible to track someone through this. Colourless Winterfell is fainter than ever through the thick blanket of snow. It’s morning, almost, and she isn’t the only person moving across the courtyard. There is a group of shivering women rushing back towards the guard’s hall, crushing a single horse’s path towards the gate, even as the snow obscures it. The gate has already been opened. Maybe there is a hunting party already out there checking their traps. She can hear the wolves beyond the walls in the still air.

In the stables two familiar boys are playing with knuckle bones on the workshop floor. They are unconcerned by her and Pod walking past. The horse is gone. Somehow, this comes as a surprise. She checks the other stalls and Pod goes to check in where the milder tempered horses are housed together. He comes back as unhappy as he went. 

Brienne looks in on her own horse, stabled alongside some of Arya’s. She strokes it’s familiar, nameless nose and lets it mouth at her empty hand. It’s an uninspiring beast perhaps, but it’s reliable. It won’t wander off if you leave it untethered. She slams her way out past the laughing boys. She should have congratulated him on his great achievement in befriending them.

She can see the main gate from the eaves of the stables. He wouldn’t lead that horse over the icy wreckage of the wall in the dark and the second gate is locked tight now. She can see two of the men she had chosen standing next to their brazier. They are bundled in their big cloaks, but she’s familiar with them now. They are men who she picked out with Jaime there. They are men who fought besides him. One of them has a grandfather with a title and will have seen him every night at dinner. 

“Go, tell Lady Sansa,” she says. Having carefully felt nothing at all, she can suddenly feel only guilt. 

Pod says, “Tell her what?”

She ignores him. If Jaime is riding full tilt at a dragon, there’s nothing she’s ever seen in him to suggest that he’ll be able to turn back. He’d come back for her at Harrenhal and thrown his name and his life around for her. She’d needed him then. That’s why he’d done it. She’d have died without him. She can’t say the same now.

“Pod, we need to tell Lady Sansa and let her decide what to do now,” she says as reasonably as she can. “Then I want you to ready our things. I want to leave today. Sansa is safe. Tarth is not.” 

Pod says,“If he’s gone, we could go after him. He’ll regret leaving like this, I know he will, my lady. We’re going anyway. We can catch him and kill him and then take him back to Tarth.” 

She doesn’t know what she’d do if she found him. Let him go again, she supposes, if that is what he wants. He hasn’t historically, been particularly prone to regrets. Letting him go is what she doing now, standing here, some kind of treason through inaction. He kept stuffing peas and pulses into his belt to dry. He has made her a fool after all. Everyone knew. Everyone knew before the army rode out. It’s as though he has slipped a knife into her side without her noticing and in leaving he has pulled it out. If there is pain, she can’t feel it yet. It’s too soon to tell the damage.

“Podrick,” she says severely and she starts out into the snow. It isn’t until she hits the cold air that she remembers he isn’t her squire anymore. She should pack her own things. 

She can go home. She needs to go home. She will have to go to court eventually, provided she survives. She will do her duty by Tarth now she has decided upon it. She can’t give it up, only because he is gone. It’s only a scratch, she decides. She can’t quite process that he’s gone without a sword. Lannister dramatics and never mind the rest of the world. His is the true injury. He’s as good as cut his own throat, if he has really gone. 

Brienne stands in the courtyard only a moment longer, hair dampening and falling into her face. She grips Oathkeeper hard. The guards shift anxiously. They take up an extremely formal position on either side of the gate. She’s making them nervous. If she’d been in King’s Landing, watching him hare off from those other eyes, she’d have sworn he’d be dead through stupidity then too, but Cersei had known him. She’d paid someone to make sure. 

Brienne turns about, Pod still following her. She raps on the workshop door. 

“Did Jaime come in for his horse?” she asks them.

“The left handed one?” the complaining boy says. “He gave that beautiful horse to the little Lady. Poor horse, to be out in this. Poor horse.”

***

He's sprawled beneath the rough-hewn warrior, his southern cloak wrapped around him. He doesn’t move to stand when she enters. He puts his head into his hands for a moment, before looking back up at her. 

She breathes through her light headiness. There are those beautifully tooled leather saddlebags, lying at his feet. She can’t make out their finery in the dark, but she stares at them, rather than looking around at all her old new gods and Jaime, looking smaller than she knows him to be. He’s never shown any inclination towards prayer.

“You’re not a fool,” he says. “I’m sorry. I thought you’d be longer with Sansa.” 

“What did you do with the horse?” 

“I took supplies from the stable stores,” he says, “I should put it all back before someone notices and they think to take my other hand.” No one is going to take his other hand. His namelessness is nominal and he is tied to her anyway. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. They’ll need those supplies for the road. “Get up.”

Jaime bobs his head. He doesn’t actually obey. He’s indistinct. When she moves forward, out of the door, morning light slips in around her and she can see the sharp plains of his face. He’s dry eyed, squinting up at her. 

“I’m sorry, Brienne; I gave the horse to Arya.” Brienne looks up at the warrior. The warrior has his sword in his big square fist. She loosens her grip on the hilt of her own sword in her own rough hand.

“What were you going to do?” He looks away, down at the gold hand, disguised beneath his gloves. 

“You know, I haven’t the faintest idea,” he says. He turns the hand. There’s not enough light in here that it would be anything but dull. “I thought I should die in that city as it burned at last. I thought I should save them all, all over again. Kinslayer: kingslayer: I’ve been drilling.” He snorts. “If she does it,” he says, “I’ve done it.”

“You can’t be so stupid as to believe that,” Brienne says. He tips his head back and smiles at her. She can see his teeth quite clearly in the gloom. 

“Did Sansa think it meant wildfire?” Brienne frowns and he squints at her. “Brienne I can’t see your face against the light. Do you think it means wildfire?”

“Sansa thought the same,” Brienne tells him. “I think the same.” Jaime chokes out a breath that might pass for silent if the morning wasn’t so still. He puts his head into his hands and this time he stays down. He’s not crying, she doesn’t think. She crouches down anyway, but she doesn’t know if he wants her any closer. He hadn’t come back to the room yet. The point of Oathkeeper’s scabbard hisses along the floor. He jerks his head up again. 

“Does Sansa have some plan? I can’t think of anything more than what I already gave you, what you already had.” 

“Yes. They’ve begun already.” He sags against the warrior. 

“I let those barrels sit under the city, growing more potent with every passing year of cowardice and inertia. What if some idiot child had slipped down there with a torch?”

“You were seventeen,” says Brienne, “Get up, Jaime.”

Jaime struggles up to match her crouch. He rubs at his legs. The floor is ice cold. He unbuckles one of the saddlebags, produces a skin of wine and levers himself stiffly up to his feet. 

“I was a knight, Kingsguard, a Lannister, Lord Commander. I led the king’s armies for a time. It was our city, and now we’ll have fulfilled the Mad King’s last command between us. And all those people will die for nothing, because they say this one really is immune to fire and I believe them. We’ll all just carry on over the ashes.” He flips the wineskin open awkwardly, one handed. “What a beginning to a new Targaryen age. Will you drink to it?” He holds the wine skin out to her. She stands, snatches it, flips the stopper back and shoves it into her belt. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his empty hands. “He was so alone,” he says. “He was lonely and crueler than Cersei ever was with less cause. He had his sister, almost until the end.”

“She’s killed more of her people than the mad king ever did,” Brienne says, as brutally as she can, “Jaime, she would have razed the Sept if you’d been there. She would have done it with you inside.” 

“She didn’t have me killed when she would have had to watch.” He looks revolted, sweeping his foot to kick the saddle bags back into the warrior’s plinth. “Then again,” he says, “I didn’t really betray her until it meant nothing to anyone else.” It had meant something to Brienne, although it isn’t anything she wants to hold up proudly to the light. 

“It meant something to Tyrion,” she says. “It will have meant something to Edmure Tully and-.” He waves her away. 

“Who is going to push the sword through her back?” he asks. “Qyburn? He’s her pyromancer. The mountain? The last of the knights she kept for their weak-mindedness? That mad Greyjoy? There won’t be any city to sack if the gates fall and she can ensure no one triumphs in her defeat. There’s so much down there.” The warrior looms large behind him, brow furrowed like her own. Jaime drifts closer. She can’t think of anything to say, so he just keeps on talking. “Arya’s taken it all. A mercy. I thought-. Even without Joff’s sword.” He shudders. “We’re both too cowardly to do it. A knight could do it. Someone with any rage. I thought: I’m going to lie in bed giving Tarth children while King’s Landing finally burns. It’s awful. I shouldn’t get to live like this.“ Brienne turns to stare down at him unhappily. 

“It’s my decision,” she says, “I won’t have you questioning it.” The twitch of his mouth almost looks like real a smile. 

“Tyrion said this was freedom. It feels as selfish as the rest ever did.”

“You’re not free,” she says. “You promised.” 

“I’ve promised _nothing_.” 

Disturbed, a tiny creature scuttles away into the gloom. Brienne jumps with her blade half out, like some nervy maid, thinking of severed, scuttling limbs. Jaime whirls about, trying to track the sound. Watching him twist absurdly, she feels true relief begin to settle into her bones. If there are gulls and mice, maybe one of the hunters traps will be closed, and tomorrow, maybe two. She snags hold of his arm as he passes and reels him in. They need to be getting back to Sansa. 

“You’re not a coward,” she says, even though she’s repeating herself. She tries out confessing something new: “It meant something to me,” she says. “I don’t like that it did. But it meant something to me. Not only for Riverrun and the girls.” 

“Don’t start worrying again,” he says severely. “You’re a ridiculously perfect person, but you’re a person. You made sure the guards knew me. You gave me that bloody sword back.” She hadn’t been priming him to leave, she’d been trying to find the balance of the blade. 

“I thought you’d gone,” she says. 

“I thought about going,” he says. Brienne steps back from him and puts a hand in her belt, rather than put it on her sword. 

“Why didn’t you?” She means, did Arya catch you and was she kind enough not to keep her promise. 

“I didn’t want to,” he says, still moving, strangely childish. “I sat in the stall with the horse until she found me.” He rearranges himself and stills. “It wasn’t my place,” he says. “I can’t do anything but fuck it up further. I might actually get to do some good again, so long as you’ll let me stay with you.” 

“Jaime,” she says tiredly.

“No guards really saw me. The boys in the stables won’t think anything of it. Arya knows, and you know, so Sansa knows, but this shouldn’t stain your reputation any more than the general association already has.”

“All you did was sit in the stables and the sept,” Brienne points out and his shoulders sag. 

“Well I am sorry for it. I’m sorry for all of this. For all the good that sorry can do for something like this.”

She strokes at this shoulders and the side of his face, trying to be comforting. Someone will have to tell Tyrion about Cersei as well. She thinks Tyrion will struggle with it less. Someone will have to tell their aunt. 

“Presumably Lady Sansa will be unhappy about this.” 

“That you were upset?” He very clearly want to deny it. It is understandable that he would be upset. There’s no shame in it and Sansa will understand. “We didn’t tell Sansa that I thought you were gone,” she says.

 _”Brienne,”_ he says. 

“I tried to,” she says. “There wasn’t time.”

He steps into her and puts his face into the fur on her shoulder and his hands into the fur at her sides. She wraps her arms over his shoulders and puts her cheek on his hair.

“Are you alright?” he asks. When she doesn’t reply, he says, “Do you need to call any dogs off? It’s cold out there if they bothered to send anyone out.”

“We’ll go to Sansa now,” she says. She thinks Pod might be waiting outside in the snow. She thinks Clegane might have know what she was thinking. He doesn’t query it. He pulls away to drop to his knees in front of the warrior to re-buckle his saddle bag. She didn’t kneel to him before she was knighted and it feels late to do it now. 

“What should I say to Sansa?”

“Give her the truth to whatever she asks,” she says. She throws the wine skin at Jaime, gently. He stares at it, sighs and then works the buckle open again under the eyes of the gods. 

“I’m glad we didn’t marry here,” he says. Brienne agrees. All the seven stare out at her, tall, for a little northern sept built for one southern woman. With their crude, blocky shapes, each of the gods is still perfectly recognisable, although the father, smith and warrior have all been given the same broad shape and the same beard. In the great septs of the south, it is easy to forget that these are god in seven aspects. Here, close and small, dark wood in a grey room, they merge. 

“So am I,” she says. She’s glad there was no septon. Jaime is finished, but he doesn’t get up.

“These statues are riddled with rot,” he says. He turns to look up at her. The stranger’s ribs stand painfully pronounced. The crone is hunched with little care in her carving, curly chunks of the maiden’s long hair trail past her extremely cold looking bare neck. The mother’s face is softly made, as though the craftsman had taken extra time with her. Now Brienne looks she can see the decay. She’ll warn Sansa; even if no one prays to them now, they were her mother’s. 

Standing looks easy this time. He looks better than she feels, shaking off the stiffness. 

“Your father, what else did he write?” She wants to share this. She’s been holding it to her chest. “He said that I was missed. He said that I’d always be welcome home.” His eyebrows fold up and in, sincere in his relief for her. He’s really smiling, albeit tiredly. 

“You’ll go home to them?” He throws the saddlebags over his shoulder and reaches for her.

“I want us to leave tomorrow, first light,” she says. He blinks at her. “Sansa said you could come with me,” she adds. She thinks that’s all the available information. Jaime’s mouth softens, and she remembers that she does have more. “Podrick is coming too, and she’ll give us a letter with her name that will help if we’re stopped. She understood my concerns. The sellswords will pass back through as my father says. If we leave now, we can avoid the queen’s army and be there before they reach King’s Landing.”

“White Harbour?” he says, “It would have been the fastest, before all this.”

“Sansa is going to give me the information she has, but we don’t have any money for a ship.” 

“Right.” He winces. He doesn’t look like he’s just been told they can leave. He’s still difficult, she decides. He wanted to be married, he wanted to know when they would go. Although, standing in the courtyard, looking at the fading tracks in the snow, she thinks she’d remembered. She tugs him into movement, wanting to take him out of the damp and into the fresh, cold air.

***

Clegane is outside Sansa’s door, striding along and buckling on his sword belt, his thick cloak over his shoulders. He stops when he sees them. 

“Thank fuck for that,” he says, grabbing the sheath of his sword and letting the belt fall away. “I’m going to eat.” He shoulders between them, forcing Jaime to step neatly aside. What had Clegane been going to do? She doesn’t want to think about it. Surely they don’t think Jaime dangerous enough for it to be worth sending the Hound after him in this weather. She looks back at Jaime, reassuring herself as she hits her fist on Sansa’s door. Jaime is looking after Clegane consideringly. Pod is still lurking behind her, looking sick.

“I know you’re not my squire,” Brienne says.

“No, I’ll do it. I’ll get everything ready,” says Pod, but he still doesn’t actually go. 

Sansa opens the door herself, just as Jaime knocks his shoulder into Brienne’s. Sansa’s posture relaxes.

“Someone needs to go after Clegane.” 

“He saw us,” says Brienne and Sansa relaxes further. 

“Ser Podrick,” says Jaime lightly. He taps Pod’s hip as he passes and leaves him, glaring a little, with the saddle bags outside the door. Sansa gestures them towards the chairs by the fire. Brienne sits heavily. Jaime stays standing. Sansa rolls her eyes at him. 

“I apologise, my lady. I was in the Sept.” Something complicated happens to Sansa’s forehead. She turns to look at Brienne. 

“He was in the Sept,” she confirms.

“Were you praying?” Sansa says to him, disbelieving. Jaime stiffens. “No,” she says, “I don’t want to know. Brienne, let’s discuss what you will need before you leave.” Sansa settles herself into her chair by the fire, arranging her skirts. Jaime turns careful eyes towards Brienne. 

“The letter, my lady?” Brienne asks Sansa. 

“On the desk.” Brienne nods him towards it. 

“I left Podrick with instructions to ask for supplies,” she tells Sansa, sitting opposite her. 

“I can give you some money with my letter. Is there anything else you need?”

“Yes,” Brienne says. “My lady, Jaime no longer has a horse.” Jaime puts the letter very carefully back on the desk. 

“What happened to that beautiful animal you came in on,” Sansa says turning to him, consternation on her face. 

“I gave it to Arya,” he says, placing the letter very carefully back on the desk.

Sansa says, clipped, “When?” 

“Just now.” 

Sansa says, “I too like to pray with my horse,” and turns back to address Brienne, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Ask the stable hands to let you look at ours. I’m not sure we have anything quite so impressive but you may take anything except the horses being trained for Bran.” Jaime passes a hand over his relieved face. He thanks Sansa, formally, with a little bow, even though she isn’t looking at him. 

Then into the awkward quiet that follows, he says, “I’ll go and help Podrick, if you’ll dismiss me?”

“Yes, of course,” says Sansa. Brienne nods him away. He twitches an tight little smile at her as he passes and when the last flutter of his cloak disappears and the door shuts behind him, Brienne realises she has pivoted in her seat to keep her eyes on him until the last moment. She snaps back to the fire and flushes a little at Sansa’s look. 

“I’ll miss you, Ser Brienne,” says Sansa. Brienne nods vigorously. 

“I’m sorry I haven’t been much use to you, these last few days.”

Sansa shakes her head and says, “Everything is as much in order as it possibly can be. You’ve been part of that, Brienne. Thank you for your service. Thank you for everything.”

“I’m sorry you needed to spy on me,” Brienne says. Sansa slumps back in her chair. 

“I hoped you hadn’t noticed,” she says. “I apologise. After you spoke to me about Jaime, I explicitly told Arya to stop orchestrating that,” she says. 

Brienne says, “She told me about the-.” She puts her fingers up to her hairline. 

“Ah,” says Sansa. “Then I told her to stop doing that. I forbade her from going through your room.” Brienne feels her heart contract and then relax. She’d made her peace with the idea, but the relief is powerful.

“Does he know?” says Sansa, as though she cannot help herself. “Does Podrick Payne?”

“Only Jaime,” Brienne says. “But it was Arya who told him, not me. My lady, could I write to you from Tarth?”

“Yes,” says Sansa immediately. “I’d like that. I’ll write back.” 

Brienne stands quickly, although she couldn’t say why. 

“If you ever need anything,” she says. “I know it’s a long way, but I swore-.” Sansa stands too. 

“You must know that you’ll always be welcome here. You can always come back.” She reaches for Brienne’s hand and looks up at her very seriously. 

“Thank you, my lady.” Brienne grips her tightly before letting go. She steps back smartly and bows. 

“Will I see you before we go?” she asks. 

Sansa presses her fingers over her eyes. “Brienne, there is so much work still to do. Please sit down.”

Brienne makes her way back out into the courtyard, taking the longest route back to her room. The caress of the cold air is welcome; her eyes ache from poring over tightly written scrolls. She has all the most current information she could possibly retain to help get them safely through Westeros. It might have been more efficient to do it with Pod and Jaime there, but she can fill them in. It’s a still early in the afternoon, the snow stopped and all sound is bright and clear. There’s not enough light left to leave today. 

Pod is flat out and buried in the blankets. Jaime is sat by the high fire, boots still on, chin tucked into his shoulder, asleep in the chair. He blinks awake when when she clicks the door softly closed.

“Don’t get up,” she murmurs, holding out a quieting hand and glancing at the still shape of Pod. She can put her own cloak away. He pauses, balanced on the edge of the chair. 

“I found a horse and a sword,” he says quietly, looking up at her. “What did Sansa say?”

“We leave in the morning.” He nods seriously. 

“The new sword’s over the desk,” he says, eyes shadowing her as she lays her cloak next to his and Pod’s. She goes through the ritual of unbuckling Oathkeeper and laying it out, taking off her gloves so as to get a better feel of the new sword with it’s unadorned, leather wrapped hilt. 

She sets it down, carefully straight. It’s a perfectly good, practical sword. It’s well balanced, not too poorly maintained, and newly sharpened. She’s not sure it suits him. It looks strikingly plain next to his knives.

She sheds her jacket, sitting on the chest to pull off her boots. She drifts across to stand over him. 

“No one taught Pod to throw a decent punch,” he says. Her eyebrows jump and then she tries to tip his face to check for injury. He waves her away. “He tried to hit me. He tried,” he repeats, quelling, when she frowns. “He swung at me when I wasn’t expecting it, so I moved.” 

“It wasn’t any good at all?” she says. 

“It was passable,” says Jaime. “It might be indelicate if I try to show him. At least for a little while.”

“I’ll do it,” Brienne says. “He suggested we ride after you and he didn't go to tell Sansa when I asked him to. What did you say to him?” Pod hadn’t meant the part about the killing Jaime, she’s quite sure. 

“I told him you could kill me,” he says. He still sounds quite serene about this assumption. Pleased by it, almost. “I said that she’d as good as promised you, but that you wouldn’t need Arya to do it.” Brienne supposes that is a different type of trust. To do for him what he can’t do for Cersei.

“What? If you decide to fire a whole city?” He flinches. The absurdity of it. She drops her hands onto his shoulders and, very gently, she jerks him back and forth on the chair. Brienne lets herself brush a thumb through the ends of his hair. She hadn’t been very effective at stopping him from riding south, but it’s not so difficult she finds, here where it’s all entirely in abstract. She forces herself to look at him, and she thinks about it; his life for all of little Tarth, his life for half a million people she doesn’t know. She’d give up her own life too. Her father’s. She finds herself queasily avoiding the idea of Pod. But that isn’t the question. She thinks she’d be angry enough to do it; it’s so alien to everything she knows about him. Jaime’s eyes widen the longer she worries at it. She can feel the minute drop of his jaw under her hands. “I’m never going to need to find out,” Brienne says, with complete certainty. Jaime’s hand lands warm on her hip. 

“Does the sword pass muster?” he asks, mercifully.

“It’s a perfectly fine sword,” she attempts. He grins a little, supremely unconvinced.

They’re careful climbing into bed, but Pod still groans and rolls further away as Jaime slides down next to him. He takes a whole fur with him. They lie, shoulders pressed together, listening to Pod sniff his way back to sleep. Brienne turns onto her side and Jaime mirrors her. Cautiously, he tips his chin forwards until their noses are almost touching. 

“We have better swords on Tarth,” she says. They can find him something lighter and finer. He pulls a mock sorrowful face.

“I thought you were pretending to admire it,” he says. Then, “It was the best that I could find. I left Sansa her finest horses and yours still may not keep up. What did happen to the two I gave you at King’s Landing?”

“Pod didn’t hobble them correctly,” says Brienne. Pod shifts behind Jaime. “I didn’t show him how to hobble them correctly.”

“Ah,” says Jaime. “I’ve been in such suspense, but that’s a less interesting story than I had hoped. No pirates.” 

Brienne says, “Walking the length of Westeros isn’t very interesting, day to day.” 

“Well you’ll have my company to delight you both,” says Jaime. “I’ll be in better spirits this time. Far less foul, I promise.” Pod stops pretending to be asleep and turns over onto his back. 

“I asked Sansa about northern marriages,” she says. Jaime swallows and Pod stops moving again, like he’s trying to pretend he didn’t start.

“What do they promise?” Jaime says, immediately. 

“Nothing,” she says. “They ask the woman if she’ll have the man, and she says she will. The rest is about the gods. You need both fathers, or something like them, for witnesses.”

“Well that’s nonsense,” says Jaime. “I'm not inflicting anyone related to me on your father, especially when you've already got it all worked out. Pod? Brienne has decided to have me, obviously,” says Jaime. “She's promised to take me with her, back to Tarth. I'm hers. You heard that?”

“Yes,” says Pod, “I’ll witness it. I’m a knight. I’m very respectable.” 

“Thanks,” says Jaime, dryly. “You told Sansa too.” 

“We aren’t the only ones,” says Brienne. “She’s going to make announcements at dinner. She wants to keep everyone’s spirits up and she’s collecting the names in her writing. It’s mostly wildlings and women left to witness, but they’ll all know.”

“Free Folk,” says Pod. 

“Free Folk,” she agrees. Jaime kisses the words in her mouth. Then he rips himself away and sits up. He’s smiling wide, with teeth and no edge.

“Ser Podrick,” he says, leaning over him and grasping his shoulder. “I’ll look after the horses, but let me show you where to put your feet when you want to hit someone.” Pod groans and puts an arm over his face.

“I know it was bad,” he says. “I knew how to do it before all the sword practice.” 

“Pod,” says Brienne. “You don’t need to make excuses. It’s a thing many people do poorly.”

Pod says, “We should sleep while we can.” 

“Don’t worry,” says Jaime, with some satisfaction. “We’ve got a long walk ahead of us. We’ll find time.”

***

Two days out from Winterfell, on top of a ridge that makes it very clear they are completely alone, Pod produces a whistle. They’ve stopped, because they’ve been walking since before daybreak, and because they’ve been climbing pretty much the whole time, gradually in the way that wears you down slowly. Brienne doesn’t feel too bad, for day two of a long march. Her feet never had time to soften. She can keep going until nightfall, so long as there aren’t any distractions. 

Jaime says, “Where did you get a whistle?”

“It’s a flute,” says Pod. Pod looks at her, before he blows onto it experimentally. Brienne isn’t going to object if he wants to play, but she’s pretty sure that’s a whistle. Pod runs his fingers up and down six notes, adds his thumb to the back and runs down six more at a different pitch. He takes his mouth away and looks at it consideringly. “He said he was making a flute.” He looks less convinced now. He puffs air into it again. Brienne screws up her face and turns to Jaime, who looks equally pained. Pod puffs again. 

“Let’s keep going,” she says. 

The incline is steep enough on the way down that they’re all quiet, concentrating on the horses. But when the ground evens out and it’s just a long trudge over white moorland as far as the eye can see, Pod hands off his horse to Jaime, gets out the whistle and trails along behind them. Snatches of half familiar, half mangled songs follow them as the icy snow crunches and pops beneath their feet. Brienne thinks that if he’s got the breath to play, then they could be moving faster. She picks up the pace. They’d agreed on the first night to head for the fishing towns past White Harbour, and hope that there are people there who recognise Sansa’s name, still have use for money, and don’t know what Jaime looks like. 

Jaime picks up the tune of the drinking song that Pod is fumbling through. His voice isn’t bad, although he’s breathing too hard for her to really tell. It’s not so good that she has to stop and kill him, at least. It’s a little airy, and with too many breaks to breathe in the middle of muddied lines. He can’t manage two lead lines well, because Arya’s horse doesn’t like Pod’s and they snort and sulk if they have to walk beside each other. He’s got one line wrapped around his right elbow and pressed into his chest with his wrist. Brienne disentangles it, takes Pod’s horse and walks out ahead. Pod gives up playing, unable to catch his breath long enough to sustain a note, and starts singing quietly too. Brienne lets her pace drag a little. They’re making good progress today. The song clarifies itself; it’s about drinking yourself to death. The song gallops faster into chaos and sniggering.

“Should we stop?” Pod calls up to her.

“Perhaps something different,” suggest Brienne. 

“Any requests?” says Jaime, sounding game enough. All the songs Brienne likes are never-ending ballads about dead heroes or sentimental songs about morning skies and lonely mountains. 

“Something new,” she says. Pod scrambles to catch up with her and take his horse back. She can see trees on the horizon, and the sun is sweeping low, behind the clouds, flushing the snow with colour. It will be a clear day tomorrow.

“I know a song for washing clothes,” Pod says. “From the women in King’s Landing. It’s got a good rhythm for walking or working.” 

“Will it get us to that tree line?” says Jaime.

“It’s got an optional few verses about stealing your lady’s best underthings and seducing a provincial lord’s jester,” says Pod. Jaime laughs and turns to Brienne. 

Brienne says, “Teach us then.” Her singing voice turns out to be scratchy, and even when she concentrates, she can’t get above much more than a whisper without hitting an abrasive tone that sounds horn-like to her own ears, but it’s a simple enough to pick up the chorus. Jaime and Pod both look delighted that she’s deigned to join in, so she can’t bring herself to feel too self-conscious. She’ll get better as she practices. She’ll stay for the songs by the fire, if there are any songs on Tarth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end. They finally get to dance in Evenfall. 
> 
> If anyone fancies talking about how jolly-hockey-sticks Brienne would be in her best universe, or discussing missed opportunities with the Lannister twin's gender stuff, then message me daisyrulesthe.tumblr.com. That's not actually my name, so it's not weird.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: If you were ok with the show or the books and read fic this is likely to be completely fine, but canon subjects like habitual and institutional sexual assault and misogyny are reflected upon as part of an inner narrative around (this) Brienne's feelings around sex and gender, and I guess might land differently. She would not say she is afraid of Jaime and she mostly worries that she will somehow coerce or harm him. They spend a lot of time sparring and working out how to negotiate ideas of violence and sex. They succeed at being careful with each other physically, if not emotionally. Jaime is just as messed up about it all, but we're not inside his head, so those issues are a little more opaque. His relationship with Cersei is a backdrop so I’ve tried to treat that pretty matter of factly, but without any romanticism, as I think (again, this) Brienne would.
> 
> Particular points I worry might surprise people are that someone is caught stealing and has his left hand cut off entirely off screen. I didn’t know how to tag for that really. It’s in chapter 2. It's minor and it's the only incident like it. The next point is that there are a couple of references to the practice of examining women for virginity.
> 
> Bumped up warning for the gender stuff: Jaime pokes at the idea over the course of the fic with increasing insistence, trying to work out what particular shape he should be making himself into, if he’s going to be a useful partner to Brienne and she’s got the 'masculinity' angle largely tied up (as he sees it.) Brienne meanwhile is like… ‘you do you, bud. Thanks for taking an interest but I also don’t understand this and for the first time in my life I might be in a position where that doesn’t matter. If we could ethically retreat to the woods, I would be up for that. If that would be easier?’ It isn't really 'resolved.' They just retreat to the woods: living the dream. 
> 
> So... there we go. Yikes. Please message me if you read this and think I missed something. 
> 
> Some of the warnings inevitably make this sound quite heavy, but I find them all to be very entertaining characters so hopefully that comes through.


End file.
